


Imagining A Tower

by linguamortua



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst, Bad Decisions, Breaking and Entering, Disability, Dogs, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Oral Sex, Permanent Injury, Reporter Karen Page, Secret Identity, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 04:00:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18307769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: Frank’s wife has left him and he’s been discharged back into civilian life with an artificial knee. He thinks that’s the worst that could happen to him—and then he meets Billy Russo.





	Imagining A Tower

**Author's Note:**

> Heartfelt thanks to [Gileonnen](https://twitter.com/gileonnen), who was a kind and incisive beta reader and greatly improved this story. 
> 
> Reading aerialiste's [took my leather off the shelf](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16744057) showed me the right format for this story, which I didn't know how to write until I saw it done by someone else. Please read her work. It's a sensational piece of art.
> 
> Section headers are from Matt Rasmussen's '[Vacation Cage](http://www.paperdarts.org/poetry/poetry-matt-rasmussen.html).'

Kim Addonizio, ‘[My Heart](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/my-heart)’

That Mississippi chicken shack.  
That initial-scarred tabletop,  
that tiny little dance floor to the left of the band.  
That kiosk at the mall selling caramels and kitsch.  
That tollbooth with its white-plastic-gloved worker  
handing you your change.  
That phone booth with the receiver ripped out.  
That dressing room in the fetish boutique,  
those curtains and mirrors.  
That funhouse, that horror, that soundtrack of screams.  
That putti-filled heaven raining gilt from the ceiling.  
That haven for truckers, that bottomless cup.  
That biome. That wilderness preserve.  
That landing strip with no runway lights  
where you are aiming your plane,  
imagining a voice in the tower,  
imagining a tower.

 

* * *

 

 **ONE**  
_When you click and drag  
yourself across the world_

Frank woke in oppressive darkness, heart hammering and mouth dry. His legs were bound and he had no motion or feeling in his left arm. Fear made a tight band around his chest and clamped down hard. Somehow, he remembered his training. Breathed in for a slow count of four, held it, and then exhaled long and slow. His eyes began to adjust. He was in a small room with a window and a dark stack of boxes in one corner. An unpleasant tingle began in his left hand. It spread up his arm, and he flexed his fingers.

Reality trickled in like water torture. Frank squeezed his eyes closed and then reopened them, hoping he was wrong. He wasn’t. This was where he lived, now. His body felt atomically, elementally heavy. Sitting up and sliding himself back against the headboard took painful effort. His knee hurt. His hip hurt. His lower back complained. The sheets had tangled around his legs in a sweaty mess, although he felt inexplicably cold. With a shaking hand, Frank rubbed his grainy eyes and checked his watch. The little hands glowed at him, told him it was just past five in the morning.

This, as they said, was the first day of the rest of his life.

He might as well get up. That was an exercise in pain. There were no nurses to help him now. He had a crutch resting against the nightstand, and with it he got himself upright. The effort nauseated him. The journey to the bathroom seemed endless. He took it one step at a time.

A ratty string switched on the bathroom light, flooding everything in a sickly yellow glow. Without looking at himself in the mirror, Frank leaned his elbows on the edge of the sink and thought about puking, just to get it over with. When it came, it was nothing but a mouthful of spit and bile that burned coming up. He rinsed his mouth and then came the ultimate indignity—he sat down to piss.

In the last year, Frank had fallen into hell and somehow managed to roll through all nine circles on the way down to the bottom. He was sure this had to be the last of them. There couldn’t be more. Unable to face standing again, he reached out and grabbed the little bottle of Percocet. He took two with a messy handful of water from the faucet. His mouth was so dry that it took two attempts to swallow the pills, which started to disintegrate into a bitter paste on his tongue. Somewhere in his kit bag he had a pile of stolen hospital fruit cups. But his bag was, he thought, still on the bedroom floor. And that was so far away. So Frank sat buck naked on the toilet. He wanted to close his eyes and never wake up again. He closed his eyes, waiting until the Percocet kicked in and dissolved everything into a comfortable fuzziness. Blessedly, time passed.

Most of what he owned was still with Maria, either boxed up in the old house or, potentially, in a landfill. He managed to find grey sweatpants and a standard-issue olive t-shirt. Hell’s Kitchen in the fall was a dismal kind of place, suffused with a weak light that couldn’t quite make it through the windows of Frank’s apartment building. Leaning on the wall, Frank cracked open his front door to read his apartment number. 304. It was technically a one-bedroom, but the bedroom was so small that it might have been better to knock down the wall and give the resulting studio an extra four inches of space. The doorways were narrow, and with a crutch in one hand, Frank’s turning circle was wider than the galley kitchen.

‘Two blocks from the subway, and laundry in the building,’ Curtis had told him on the phone. Frank, too doped up to care, had agreed. It beat being homeless. It might look better when Frank unpacked. Right now all he’d managed was the Percocet and a toothbrush, which he hadn’t touched. Curtis had left some essentials for him—soap, toilet paper, cereal, milk. Frank would have to call him and thank him. In the meantime, he carefully put the cereal box in an empty cupboard and closed the door. Anyway, he didn’t have any bowls.

Bowls, like socks, taxes and children’s dental appointments, had previously been things that had occurred by magic. They would mysteriously appear, or email notifications would arrive to confirm that the IRS had had its whims satisfied for another year. Frank had never had to concern himself with anything like crockery except to approve. He knew how the social contract worked, so that’s what he unfailingly did. Now bowls were in his purview, which was a problem. He opened all the cupboard doors and drawers in their turn, wondering what else should be in there. What else he didn’t know he didn’t know.

It was pathetic, when he thought about it. He looked around the little apartment. The contents of his kit bag and rucksack were as familiar to him as his own body. The boxes in the corner of the bedroom were a mystery. In the bedroom, he switched on the light and considered them. If he didn’t keep moving, he would go back to bed and curl up there, atrophying.

So he moved.

Frank had one box open and was sitting on a second when he heard an insistent knocking at his door. More than insistent. It was the knock of someone who had been waiting a while and was running out of patience. He levered himself up, teeth clenched. He had managed to dress, sparing whoever was outside a great view of his dick. He opened the door.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah?’ echoed the man on the other side of the doorway: stocky, buzz-cut and with a livid red burn scar covering half his face. ‘Tried to call you. Tried ringing the doorbell.’

‘Didn’t hear anything.’

‘Fix your goddamn bell, then.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry’s about right. You want this ride or not?’

Frank looked down at the floor for a minute. His bare feet. The man’s boots. Very familiar boots. Everything about the guy was somehow familiar.

‘Curtis send you?’

‘Who the fuck else?’

‘Look,’ said Frank, very carefully, because there was an impotent kind of anger rising in him and he was in no shape to start picking fights. ‘I just got out the VA in Brooklyn. Kinda finding my feet.’ The guy gave him an appraising look.

‘Yeah, well,’ he said. ‘We’ve all been one of Curtis’ lame ducks.’

‘Where we going?’ The guy reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled Post-It note.

‘Physio, eleven thirty,’ he read. ‘If you got shit you need, go get it now.’

It seemed rude to close the door, and the guy would probably turn around and leave. So Frank left it open and dealt with the prickly feeling between his shoulder blades as he hauled himself across the square of floor to his rucksack, deflated against the wall. His wallet was in there. And his phone, dead. He put on his winter coat, which was too warm but better than looking like he was in his goddamn pyjamas. Sneakers. He grabbed the wallet and shoved it into the pocket of his sweatpants. His crutch was leaning against the wall and he took that too, hating that he had to and hating that someone else would see him using it.

‘Let’s go,’ he told the guy. Then he had to hold the guy up longer, so that he could shuffle the length and breadth of the apartment looking for front door keys. Eventually, he found them on a hook by the door—one of the little adhesive plastic hooks. It was a bright white, like a Hollywood tooth. It had the stamp of Curtis all over it. Crutch in hand, Frank stood stupidly at the door for a while. The guy turned without a word and heading downstairs, leaving Frank alone to lock the door and make his agonising, slow way down to the ground floor. His ride was a beat-up Impala. He sat in the back seat, not wanting to talk or be talked to.

‘Suit yourself,’ muttered the guy. It was only when Frank was limping into the physiotherapist’s clinic that he realised he hadn’t even bothered to ask the man his name.

 

* * *

 

 **TWO**  
_there is always the dull  
reminder of the original_

On the third day, Frank woke up in the middle of the night with a twisting, colicky stomach pain that left him curled into a ball and gasping. He ran through the checklist, instilled in him by a staff sergeant who’d been particularly skilled at anticipating the stupidity of grunts. Slowly the reality set in that he was hungry; he was more than hungry. In the kitchen, he found the cereal box empty, and he drank the last half-cup of milk with a pair of little pink Percocet tablets. When the milk hit his stomach, he felt real hunger for the first time as a recognisable piece of feedback. _This is what it feels like. This is what feeling is like._

His knee throbbed in a dull but persistent way that made sleep an impossibility. He felt sick and sweaty. _Pain’s just weakness leaving the body._ They wouldn’t be sending him to physiotherapy if there was anything wrong. The pain was a lie, and also real. Just like his life right now was real, but also somehow unreal and terrible.

He could text David or Curtis; Curtis would most likely still be awake, or would wake up if his phone went off. Curtis was a good guy. Curtis also only had one leg, and Frank couldn’t make himself call up the guy with one leg and bitch about his knee pain. Curtis would also tell him to take his meds. And to come to group, which Frank would rather die than do. He swung his legs out of bed and touched his feet to the flat, rough carpet. The physiotherapist had told him to keep gently mobile and listen to his body. Right now, his body was screaming at him, but _keep active_ was a directive and Frank knew how to follow orders. He pulled on one of his old undershirts, comfortably soft at the seams, and a pair of basketball shorts that had seen better days. With bare feet, he made his careful way to the door and stepped out into the hallway. He left the key. He had nothing worth stealing, anyway.

At night, the muted brown hallway with its old yellow light fittings was somehow less sordid. It was warmer out here than in his apartment, and somewhere above his head a pipe hissed and gurgled. Frank slowly paced down the hall towards the stairs, counting the doors. He had five neighbours on this floor, in a U shape. Liberated by the strange, cozy loneliness of nighttime, he lingered outside each door. 305 had shreds of tape stuck to their door, from last year’s Christmas decorations. The air outside 301 smelled stale and ancient, and there were papers and leaflets stuffed under the door until they spilled out.

His knee hurt, but it was a strange and otherworldly pain. Frank felt unmoored from reality. He reached the stairs and started down. Sarge always said if you couldn’t sleep, then you hadn’t worked hard enough. So he was going to work hard. Three flights down, then three back up. Curtis would have had to do this, too. He reached the first landing and turned carefully, holding the handrail. Frank wondered how much harder it was with a prosthetic leg. His knee felt as though it was going to buckle at every step. Physiotherapist wouldn’t have told him to walk if he wasn’t ready. Curtis would still have his leg if Frank hadn’t fucked up. He was breathing hard through his nose. Should’ve brought the crutch with him. He was supposed to listen to his body.

He reached the ground floor with a heavy breath of relief. It was colder down here, with a draught coming under the building’s imperfectly-fitted front door. One wall was covered with little silver mailboxes, and Frank found his, although he had no key. Nobody knew he was living here yet; at least, nobody likely to send him mail. The carpet was damp under his feet. He turned back to the stairs and started to climb them. With each step he watched his scarred knee, lining it up over his middle toe. If he concentrated on that he could almost ignore how much it hurt. When he got back to the third floor, he did it all over again. _Three times_ , he told himself. It didn’t hurt more each time but it didn’t hurt less either. His feet were cold and he was getting tired. A sympathy pain had picked up in his hip, and his foot was cramping, too.

Frank braced himself for the last, long climb. He paused at the first landing, and then the second. Leaning against the wall, he stared up the final flight of stairs. He could almost see his door from here. It was only another sixteen steps. It was fine. An awkward sideways shuffle took him across the landing to the handrail, and he latched onto it like a remora. He exhaled long and hard and started to climb.

‘Coming through.’ The voice behind him was startling, and Frank came around with his fist high, ready to fight. A tall man in a black jacket held up his hands in mock-defense. ‘Easy, slugger.’

‘Sorry.’ Frank reached for the wall again. The guy was about his age, perhaps a little younger, and he had a duffel bag over one shoulder. Good hair. Great hair. Frank was aware that he was sweating through the back of his olive drab t-shirt, and that he hadn’t shaved in two days. Good hair guy brushed past him on the way up the stairs, passed Frank’s door and kept going. It was only when his footsteps had diminished that Frank could try the stairs again. He took them at a snail’s pace, swinging his leg out to one side so he didn’t have to bend his knee.

Back in his apartment, he locked the door and limped to the bathroom. His reflection in the mirror was pale and sweaty. He looked like garbage. Unlike good hair guy. That fucker. He fumbled for the Percocet and stared at the bottle, half-full. Losers and junkies kept taking the stuff when they knew it was fucking with them. Or cripples and busted old soldiers. Frank popped open the cap and poured them in a rattling shower into the toilet. Before he could change his mind, he flushed, twice. The pills swirled away, and Frank threw the bottle in the trash can. He ignored the burning pain in his knee, and the way his throat stung like he was going to cry.

He didn’t need pills and he didn’t need group. He lurched back to bed and lay there, sweating through his shirt and into the sheets. Eventually his nausea began to subside. Sleep was elusive, though. The minutes dragged on into an hour. With a sigh, Frank rolled out of bed and headed back to the stairs.

 

* * *

 

 **THREE**  
_left behind. Not as bright  
as what’s moving on_

The days ticked by, and Frank slept a little more, started to eat regularly.He could almost take the stairs without cursing. He ran a load of laundry laundry. Paid his phone bill. Started making his bed every morning, and flossing his teeth.

On a crisp, bright morning a week after he moved in, he opened the curtains properly for the first time, and set his dollar store frying pan on the stove. He thought he was a guy who cared about stuff like cast iron and buying American, but it turned out that he didn’t have the energy for it any more. Even on a good day, like today. A day when something about the sun was rejuvenating. He fried onions and sausage and potatoes together, watching the onions caramelise with his mouth watering furiously. The old saw about watched pots applied, and in the end Frank took it off the heat too early and ate the whole mess out the pan, not caring that the potatoes needed another five minutes and that he had no ketchup.

As he ate, he propped his phone up on the counter and listened to a local news segment on the radio. Some guy was running a fundraiser for kids with cancer. There was an issue with planning permission for a supermarket. Traffic still existed. And over in the Bronx, someone had taken out a whole drug smuggling ring single-handedly, murdering them in their own hideout. Frank’s eyebrows raised at the last. For a moment, he could almost smell the blood. He tapped the pause button, shutting up the newsreader, and got up to drop his pan in the sink. Forced himself to smell the onions still in the air, and not the hot, acrid smell of gunfire, or canvas, or plastic, or sweat.

He leaned his elbows on the counter and rubbed at his face, banishing the memories. His heart hurt like a toothache, insistent. He soothed his temples in little circles and got caught up in the hypnotic rhythm of it. His phone shrilled, startling him.

‘Hey, stranger.’

‘Curtis.’

‘You been ignoring everyone, or just me?’

‘Cell died. Sorry.’

‘Unpacked yet?’

‘Half way done.’ Frank levered himself onto the edge of his bed, lacking a better place to sit. ‘Need to figure out some furniture, some kitchen stuff.’

‘I can come over if you need help.’

‘I’ve got it,’ said Frank abruptly, and then immediately felt bad. ‘No, it’s okay. It’s just not a high priority.’

‘What’s a high priority for you right now, Frank?’

‘Physio, I guess. Need to get myself down to the VA, start looking for work.’ He knew that was the correct answer; he delivered it crisply and on cue, like he was back in bootcamp. Yes, sir, behaving myself here.

‘Okay.’ Curtis’ voice was carefully neutral. ‘Listen, I got a call from a reporter the other day.’

‘Yeah? What about?’

‘You seen all this stuff on TV about the guy they’re calling The Punisher?’

‘It was just on the local radio,’ Frank said. ‘I don’t have a TV.’

‘Well, they think he’s ex-military.’

‘I think he’s an asshole,’ Frank said.

‘Yeah. Yeah, me too.’

‘But he’s an asshole that gets shit done.’

‘That’s a pretty familiar breed, huh?’ said Curtis.

‘So what—some journalist wants to know if he goes to group?’ Frank snorted, imagining, and on the other end of the line Curtis laughed too.

‘This lady thinks he might have been a Marine.’

‘Fuck that.’

‘She made a good argument.’

‘So what did she want?’

‘To check her theory against someone who’d know.’

‘You?’

‘Not me,’ said Curtis. ‘I’m a medic first, you know that. I want to give her your number.’

‘Great,’ Frank said, rolling his eyes at the wall. ‘I gotta talk to some chick who read a Wikipedia page and has a _theory_.’

‘Look, I think you’ll like her,’ Curtis said. ‘She’s smart and she’s prepared. The kind of journalist that gets shit done, you know? If her theory holds water, maybe she can help get this guy caught and put away.’

‘Are you trying to give me shit to do?’ Frank asked, suspicious.

‘Yeah,’ said Curtis. ‘This is what happens when you don’t come to group.’

Frank groaned. ‘Okay, okay. Give her my number. But if she turns out to be a wacko, I’m sending her right back to you.’

‘You’ll like her,’ Curtis said again, the ring of certainly in his voice. ‘Her name’s Karen. Karen Page.’

Exhausted by even the prospect of talking to someone new, Frank finished up the conversation mechanically. It was only nine in the morning and he was bafflingly tired. He lay back down on his bed, closed his eyes. Now that he was here he found he couldn’t nap. Instead, he picked up his guitar and sat up against the headboard to noodle away. If Frank had had all the confidence in the world, he couldn’t have called himself more than a mediocre player. But somehow in the past few months he seemed to have lost the knack of anything but chords.

On the nightstand, his cell phone lurked. Frank carefully didn’t look at it. The reporter was probably busy. It wasn’t as if she was going to call him immediately.

The phone rang.

Frank picked up, like a sucker.

‘Frank Castle.’

‘Mr Castle? Hi, this is Karen Page, from the New York Bulletin. Curtis Hoyle gave me your details.’

‘It’s Frank. Yeah, he said to expect your call.’

‘Thanks for agreeing to talk to me. Curtis speaks pretty highly of you. He said you might have insights into a story I’m writing.’

‘The Punisher.’

‘Exactly. My editor is demanding facts and analysis, and so far I’m a little thin on both. Can I buy you a coffee somewhere and pick your brain?’

Frank thought about it for a moment. He shifted his weight back and forth on his bad knee.

‘Got a bad leg,’ he said eventually, forcing out the words. ‘Not sure I can make it out today. But I can give you my address, if that’s okay.’

‘That would be fine, too,’ said Karen, not sounding at all put out.

‘I’m in Long Island, near the—’

‘Oh, let me grab a pen. Okay, shoot.’

Frank gave her the address and the train station.

For the next several hours, Frank strenuously attempted to stay out of his own head. He did sit ups on the floor, and his physio exercises. He washed his frying pan. He read another chapter of _Moby Dick_ , and made a mug of instant coffee. Most of all, he told himself that this was the kind of normal, everyday shit that normal people did. Read books, did push-ups, cleaned their apartments. Except that normal people didn’t talk to journalists about weird dudes doing murder, or freak out about leaving the house.

He still startled when the doorbell rang, and he buzzed her up.

Frank opened the door and found himself eye to eye with a tall, swan-necked blonde. She was pale in a way that looked like an old oil painting, and her eyes were very blue. Beautiful women were not a feature in Frank’s current life, and he stared at her for too long before rational thought returned.

‘Hi,’ he said eventually, stupidly. ‘I’m Frank.’

‘Hi Frank,’ she said. ‘I’m Karen.’ She smiled gently. ‘Can I come in?’

‘You can come in,’ Frank said, backing up hurriedly and trying to hide the way his knee almost folded in on itself. The apartment didn’t have enough in it to look cluttered, and if nothing else Frank still knew how to keep his shit clean and tidy. He waved her towards one of the pair of bar stools.

She sat, crossing one knee over the other. Her navy blue shoes matched her skirt. Frank looked away.

‘Just moved in?’

‘Yeah.’ Frank rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed suddenly. ‘Do you, uh—can I get you water, or coffee?’

‘Coffee would be great,’ said Karen. ‘I had an early start.’

Frank busied himself with the kettle and the instant coffee, and the mismatched mugs.

‘So how’s, uh, the news?’ Frank asked, with exceptional stupidity. He spilled some coffee powder on the counter and tried to surreptitiously brush it into the sink.

‘Are you asking about the content, or the newsroom?’

‘What’s it like to write, I guess,’ said Frank. He turned and leaned on the counter while the kettle boiled.

‘It’s a good job,’ said Karen. ‘I like trying to find the signal in the noise. I like informing people.’ She was bright and sharp like a bird. Frank liked her.

‘What’s your beat?’ Frank asked. Karen smiled at him approvingly; he knew the right word.

‘I do a lot of local. Keep my ear to the ground. Some people think it’s petty stuff, but when you live in the middle of it…’ she trailed off, and Frank nodded. ‘And right now it’s this guy they’re calling the Punisher.’

‘Dumb name,’ grunted Frank. The kettle pinged, and he poured water over coffee and stirred it into something resembling the drink. ‘Here.’

‘Thanks.’ Karen took the mug in her slim hands. ‘I guess there’s folks out there who think his victims need to be punished.’

‘You gonna argue with that?’

Karen made a little seesaw gesture with one hand. ‘I try and let myself stay undecided until I start compiling notes.’

‘But you want to write about him.’

‘I do,’ admitted Karen. ‘And not just the breaking news. I really want to get into this guy’s head.’

‘Ugly place to be, sounds like.’

‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out.’ She pulled a notebook and a pen out of her bag. Frank watched.

‘Thought you’d record me.’

‘Hey, I kick it old-school. Writing helps me stay connected to what people are telling me.’

‘Smart. How does this work, anyway? You ask, I answer?’

‘Depends. I can interview you. Or we can just chat and I can write down anything that sounds relevant.’

‘I could do that.’ Frank pulled himself up until he was sitting on the counter. It meant Karen had to look up at him a little, but only a little. And if he came around the kitchen counter, he’d have to limp, and get himself up onto the bar stool. He wasn’t ready for that kind of proximity to a pretty woman. ‘Is this okay?’ he asked anyway.

‘This is fine.’ Karen lined up her notebook on the table in front of her and read something on the page. She clicked her pen out. ‘Okay. So let’s start with this: what kind of man can launch an assault on a room full of hardened career criminals and walk away without a trace?’

She pulled a folded sheet of paper from her notebook and opened it out against the counter, flattening it with her hand. Frank slid down and held two corners with his index fingers. It was a photocopy of a map with a police case number along the top. He examined the street and the buildings and the angles, noting elevation, exits, windows.

‘I know how I’d do it,’ he said at last, and he showed her. ‘Set up here, cause a distraction here—smoke, flashbang, whatever—and maybe cut the power. Go in here, pop pop pop.’ He tapped the back alley. ‘Leave this way, no cameras, avoid the road.’

He finished his explanation and looked up at her. She wasn’t looking at the map, but at him.

‘You’re not far off,’ she said, slowly, ‘which kinda answers my question. Doesn’t it?’

‘I guess,’ Frank mumbled, suddenly embarrassed. Mentally he asked himself why he had to recreate a murder scene for a nice woman doing her job. Why he couldn’t have just answered the damn question. So he answered it now. ‘You know, anyone with a bit of training could figure out the strategy. Military, paramilitary, ‘s not complex.’

‘And could they kill all those men and get out alive? Anyone with a bit of training?’

Frank made an evasive noise and shrugged. He turned away and started fussing with the coffee maker, and he could feel Karen’s eyes on the back of his neck as he did so. To tell her yes, it could have been someone like him, someone he served with, someone he knew, felt like a betrayal of everything he’d signed up for as a Marine. She waited him out, though. He couldn’t keep a guest hanging. And, somewhere out in the city, someone was committing murder.

He answered her questions.

‘What do you really think?’ Frank asked, much later. He had long since finished his coffee. There was still some left in Karen’s mug, undoubtedly cold by now. Karen made a helpless gesture with her pen and looked over her notes. She flipped back through all the pages she’d filled with Frank and further yet, to where she’d been writing in a blue pen.

‘I don’t know,’ she said finally. ‘I mean, the guy’s a serial killer. That we know for sure. If I’m honest, he frightens me.’

‘But…?’ Frank began, hearing it in the air.

‘But you have to admit, he’s effective. Everyone he goes after is dirty. Every single one of them ends up dead. And I can’t find a single example of him harming a civilian. Not a single one, Frank—and do you know how often civilians end up dead?’ She caught herself and looked embarrassed. ‘I guess you do.’

‘Yeah,’ said Frank. ‘I do.’

‘If I were the Punisher and I was trying to clean up the streets…’

‘It’s how I’d do it,’ said Frank, pre-empting her.

‘Exactly. It’s almost as if he wants to be sympathetic.’

‘Does anyone really know what he wants?’

‘I have a file from an FBI profiler who had a few ideas.’

‘You believe it?’

‘Maybe. I want to.’

‘You’re humanising him pretty hard there, Karen,’ said Frank, not really disapproving but interested to see what happened when he applied some pressure. What happened was that she flushed, and latched on like a predator tracking its prey.

‘I like that choice better than humanising the men he killed. I used to work in a law office. We were pretty small-time, lots of regular folk with regular problems. It was Hell’s Kitchen, so almost everyone we worked with had some kind of run-in with crime. Do you know what it’s like to sit there and tell a nice old lady that there’s nothing you can do about the person who smashed her window and stole her jewellery? Men like that gang ruin the lives of everyday people just trying to get by. If the Punisher wants to wipe them off the map, I can live with that.’

She had a steel core and Frank liked it. He liked listening to her talk; she and David would get along, two whip-smart intellectual types arguing every point. In the end, he just shut up and listened to her. In any case, she had stopped taking notes a long time ago.

 

* * *

 

 **FOUR**  
_A thin curtain of pixels  
clings like a spider’s molt._

‘So, you bit,’ said Curtis with a deep and annoying satisfaction. Curtis had the good posture and easy demeanour of a man who was, if not thriving, then at least aggressively making the best of it. Frank envied him, but he couldn’t be angry. Not at Curtis; undeniably one of the best men he knew.

‘I bit,’ said Frank with a shrug.

‘Interesting woman,’ said Curtis.

‘Not what I expected.’ Frank touched the outside of his coffee mug and found it too hot to drink. They were in a nondescript cafe near Frank’s house. Well within limping distance. Thoughtful of Curtis. It wasn’t a chain, just some diner-style place. Frank could see himself becoming a regular here, and the thought was pleasing.

‘What were you expecting?’

‘I dunno. A reporter type.’ Frank considered Karen for a moment. ‘Seemed like she really gave a shit.’

‘That’s what I thought, too.’

‘I think I’m gonna read the article.’

‘Let me know if it’s good.’

Curtis was drinking black tea, and he had a slice of pie that he hadn’t yet touched. But now he picked up his fork and pressed it down into the slice, eating the crust first. Without the crust holding it all together, the apple filling slid into a circle on the plate.

Frank watched. He realised that Curtis was waiting him out.

‘I know what you’re doing,’ said Frank, and Curtis grinned at him around a mouthful of pie, utterly shameless.

‘Okay,’ he said.

‘Guess I’m bored,’ said Frank, after a long pause in which he sipped his too-hot coffee and burned his mouth.

‘Boredom’s great,’ said Curtis. ‘Means you’re healing and you need more challenge.’

‘Challenge like what?’

‘Like anything. For example, thinking about your next move. How’s the apartment, by the way?’

‘It’s fine. Good location.’

‘Right. Diner, grocery store, train line. Everything you need.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Unpacked yet?’

‘Mostly. All the stuff that isn’t with Maria.’ Despite his efforts, Frank hesitated before he said her name.

‘Got some art up on those walls?’ Curtis was a big believer in art. Even when they were deployed, he used to have a bunch of little postcards. Monet and Kandinsky and whatnot. He would prop them up on his locker, or just flip through them. _Good for the soul._

‘No. Maybe I should.’

‘Make it a home.’

‘It doesn’t feel like a home.’

‘The thing about that,’ said Curtis, scraping up the little apple pieces with the help of his index finger and a fork, ‘is that you have to put the effort in to making it one.’

‘Never felt like that at the old place,’ said Frank mutinously, resentfully.

‘Yeah,’ said Curtis. ‘And your wife left you.’ Frank sucked in a breath, floored by how much it hurt. ‘You can only take responsibility for your own actions, you know? Making your space your own is something you can control.’

In the old place, Maria used to have flowering plants in all the windows. Frank realised with a pang of guilt that she had made their house a home. Someone chose and watered the plants. Took off the dead leaves. Made them nice.

‘I hate when you’re right,’ Frank said, through the tight, painful band around his chest. ‘I’ll grow some fucking herbs in the kitchen, how’s that sound?’ He forced out a laugh.

‘Sounds pretty good to me.’ Curtis didn’t sound like he was joking at all.

Frank took a gulp of coffee and hid in the mug for a while. Making himself drink the coffee stopped his throat from feeling like it was about to close up and asphyxiate him. The ambient noise in the cafe broke in on him and stopped being ambient. The forks and spoons and knives rattled like gunfire, and he could suddenly hear every word of all the conversations. Reality was an oppressive force around him. Curtis had taken the seat with its back to the door, but Frank felt trapped. Surveilled.

‘Jesus,’ he said under his breath, and rubbed his chest, trying to loosen it. His good leg was bouncing up and down. He only realised when it smacked the bottom of the table and made the cutlery jump and rattle. Curtis was very calm. Frank glared at him anyway, as if he was somehow responsible. ‘Tell me how I’m supposed to control my life when I can’t control—this?’ He didn’t want to put a name to it.

‘Same principle,’ Curtis shrugged. He set his fork down in the middle of the plate, tines down. ‘One day at a time.’

‘Sounds hokey.’

‘It works. It worked for me. It works for people who let it work.’

* * *

Later, back in the physiotherapist’s clean white office, Frank thought about _one day at a time_ to take his mind off the way his knee felt under Petra’s attentions.

‘How does that feel?’ she asked, her hands strong and cool as she flexed Frank’s knee. On his back, Frank shrugged.

‘Hurts.’

‘Can you be more specific?’

‘Hurts more than walking, but less than lying still.’

‘Okay. What kind of pain are you feeling?’ _You can only take responsibility for your own actions._

‘I don’t fucking know,’ said Frank, quietly but biting off the words. He ran his hand over his face. ‘Sorry.’ Petra gently brought Frank’s leg back down onto the bed.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard worse.’

‘I want it to stop hurting,’ said Frank. He realised too late that his eyes were prickling, and turned his face to the wall.

‘Let’s work on that. How have you been treating yourself?’ _You have to put the effort in._

‘I’m eating, I’m sleeping, I’m walking.’

‘How much are you walking?’

‘Bit every day. Groceries. Taking the stairs.’

‘Does it feel bad when you take the stairs?’

Frank fixed Petra’s tanned, sensible face with a glare. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you have an elevator in your building?’

‘Yes.’

‘I feel like I remember telling you to listen to your body, Frank.’

Frank shrugged. ‘Bodies hurt. It’s what they do.’

Oh man.’ Petra snorted a laugh. ‘You military guys. Remind me, what did they prescribe you post-op?’

‘Percocet.’

‘Are you still taking it?’

‘No.’

‘How’s your pain level day to day?’

‘Bearable.’

‘Yeah?’ Petra put one hand on his forearm and Frank turned back to look at her. She had a decidedly no-shit kind of face.

‘Okay, it sucks. I use my crutch mostly. It’s hard to sleep.’

‘So why aren’t you taking pain meds?’

‘I don’t know,’ Frank lied. Then feeling bad about the lie, he told part of the truth. ‘They make me feel sick.’

‘Let me send you home with T3s instead. But at least take some Advil. You shouldn’t be hurting all the time.’

 _Too late for that_ , Frank wanted to tell her. Instead, he nodded and let her do her work.

‘You take it one day at a time,’ she said. ‘Some days are going to be better than others. Just let yourself be where you are.’

‘Do you know Curtis Hoyle?’ Frank asked sourly.

‘No, why?’

‘No reason.’

 

* * *

 

 **FIVE**  
_In a new city, a webcam  
no one watches is watching_

The first and only piece of mail Frank received at his new apartment arrived in a manila envelope that had been curled into a tight tube to fit into his mailbox. It had come from an address he didn’t recognise. He opened it right away, tearing the top off messily and shaking out a sheaf of papers into his palm. The top page shouted that it was from THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, and at first Frank didn’t understand until several lines down he saw his name, and Maria’s, and realised that they were divorce papers.

Then he couldn’t read anything at all, and a humming started up in his ears. He sat down on the floor under the mailboxes, and the stack of papers fell into disarray in his lap. Pawing through them didn’t make them magically transform into something else. Frank wasn’t even sure he fully understood them. Did it mean that he was divorced now? Or did he need to do something? Should he call Maria? Should he call the kids?

He hadn’t called the kids, he thought to himself. He just hadn’t. Because they were in Idaho with Maria, and because—he cleared his throat and pulled himself up to his feet. Hastily he made his way up the stairs to his apartment, knee protesting. Inside, he threw all the papers on the kitchen counter.

He hadn’t called the kids, because he’d been too busy sitting around feeling sorry for himself. And maybe because if he called them, he might have to talk to Maria and he didn’t know how. She was always better at that stuff than him. When she had explained that things were over, she had been very fair and very articulate. Words like ‘stability’ and ‘therapy’ had come out of her mouth. With the kids at school, she had held his hand as they sat on the soft green corduroy couch and told him very gently that he hadn’t really been any sort of husband to her for the past five years.

The worst part was, she’d been right. Blindsided, Frank had had nothing to say in his defense. But there wasn’t a defense. When he thought back, she had told him to get into therapy a lot. She had told him to stop yelling around the kids a lot. She’d kept bringing up plans for ‘when you get out’. And Frank had kept hopping back on planes to the Middle East, coming back a little bit more fucked up every time.

Frank reached for his phone and opened the phone book. He had nine numbers in there, which was pathetic. Two of those guys were dead, so he guessed he had seven numbers. For a moment he hovered over Curtis’ name. The long, long list of things that Curt had done for Frank lately was already a source of embarrassment. He couldn’t add to it. So he scrolled down, tapped a number, and his phone dialled it.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘This is Frank.’

‘Frank!’ Karen’s voice was bright, even though it was late and most regular people would probably be in bed. ‘Hi!’

‘I hope it’s okay that I called.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Karen. ‘What’s up?’

‘Look, uh,’ he began, already writhing with shame. ‘If I said I needed to find a lawyer, would you know anyone?’

‘Oh my God,’ said Karen. ‘My life is filled with lawyers. You have no idea. Frank, are you in trouble?’

‘Nah,’ he grunted. He bit the inside of his cheek as a penance for being an asshole. ‘Long story.’ The line was quiet, Karen listening. Frank felt compelled to fill in the silence, knowing even as he did so that this was her tactic, her method; the tactic that everyone eventually adopted with him, because he was too goddamn stupid to hold a regular conversation like a regular person. ‘Getting divorced,’ he said eventually.

‘I’m sorry,’ Karen said.

‘Don’t be.’

There was a soft rustling of paper, and then Karen asked, ‘Can you write down a number?’

‘Yeah.’ Frank had a scrap of paper up on his fridge with a magnet shaped like the Statue of Liberty that he’d found abandoned in one of his cupboards. He grabbed a pen, and wrote down the number as Karen read it off. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Didn’t know where to start looking. Figured you had contacts.’

‘Anything else you need, Frank, just let me know.’

Frank was pretty sure he never wanted to call her again. He would rather dissolve down into the floor, between the floorboards, never to be heard from again. The only blessing present to be counted was that she hadn’t pressed him for details, which perhaps had been why he’d called her in the first place.

In the end, he deleted her number from his phone. Not knowing what else to do with himself, he went to gather up all his dirty socks and put them in the hamper.

The laundry room in the basement was the warmest part of the building. When Frank got there at midnight it was empty and quiet. He’d brought his copy of _The Master and Margarita_ down, tucked awkwardly under one arm. Instead of making the journey back up to his apartment, Frank sat on the floor in the corner with his legs stretched out in front of him, and read while his laundry turned over and over. The machine was a pleasant white noise, and for a while he managed to absorb himself in the weird subplot about the cat. The whine of the spin cycle starting jerked him out of the plot. He looked up, just in time to see the door open and the guy from the stairs come in.

‘Weird time to do laundry, man,’ Frank said ironically. The guy gave a short bark of laughter and dropped his laundry bag on the floor.

‘I don’t like people seeing my underwear,’ he said. It was Frank’s turn to laugh. ‘What’s your excuse?’

‘I like the nightlife.’

The guy turned his bag out onto the floor and started stuffing his clothes into the machine by the door. Frank kept his eyes down on his book, but he could watch out of the corner of his eye. Everything going into the machine was black. It could have been Frank’s closet. The guy was maybe his age, too. Taller, and leaner, and definitely, Frank thought with some annoyance, better looking. He moved with a kind of brisk, elegant economy of movement that made Frank think of a boxer.

‘So, what’s your deal?’ the guy asked casually as he shut the machine door and opened the coin slide. Frank wasn’t prepared for the guy to talk to him again, and he fumbled his book off his lap. Luckily, the guy hadn’t been watching.

‘My deal?’

‘New here?’

‘Sure,’ said Frank. He went back to his book. At least, he looked down at the pages. The man was moving around, shifting his laundry bag. Then, a rattling sound, and a clunk. Frank looked up from his book covertly, under his eyelashes. The guy was holding his breath, leaning very still over the coin slide. Another click, and the machine started its cycle. The guy relaxed, and looked over at Frank. Realised he’d been busted.

He laughed.

‘Oops,’ he said. ‘Clearly something wrong with this machine.’

‘Bad service,’ agreed Frank, not sure whether to smile back. The guy leaned against the wall and looked at his watch.

‘Fuck paying four bucks for a load of laundry, anyway.’

‘I guess,’ said Frank. Apparently all he had to do was make noises of agreement.

‘I could show you,’ said the guy, ‘but you look like a law-abiding citizen.’

‘Hey, I’m not looking for bad karma,’ Frank said, half-believing it. The guy snorted with amusement, and something in Frank brightened and lifted. This was somehow the most fun he’d had in weeks. The guy was probably just fucking with him. But Frank was okay with being fucked with. Hell, it used to be a daily sport for him back when he was deployed. Everyone fucked with everyone. Except usually it didn’t make Frank feel like he wanted to buy the guy dinner. As he followed the train of thought, he turned his wedding ring round in circles with his thumb. It was an old habit. He only realised he was doing it when he saw the guy notice the movement.

‘Your wife live here, too?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Frank. Keeping his voice neutral took enormous effort.

‘She still your wife?’

‘Not exactly.’ The spin cycle stopped, and Frank got carefully to his feet to throw everything in the dryer. He had to hold on to the corner of the machine to get up, and he could feel his face getting hot knowing that the guy was watching him. A couple of coins in the slot; he shoved it home and set the dry cycle. Instead of trying to get himself back down on the floor with any grace, he reached for his book and leaned against the wall.

‘I tried reading that,’ the guy said, nodding at Frank’s book. ‘The cat was good. I couldn’t figure out why the chick died, though.’

‘She dies?’ Frank said, appalled. He’d been hacking through this fucking book for days, trying to understand the plot.

‘That’s the Russians, man—everybody dies.’

‘Asshole,’ said Frank, indignantly.

‘It’s _Billy_ ,’ said the guy. For a minute Frank thought about just not replying. But the guy smiled at him, and Frank was weak.

‘Frank,’ he said sullenly, ‘from the third floor.’

What kind of name was ‘Billy’ for a grown man, Frank thought with irritation as he dragged his laundry hamper back up the stairs. It banged on every single step. The back of Frank’s neck was still warm. Somehow, the guy had inveigled his way under Frank’s skin. It was easier when he had just been anonymously attractive. And why did that annoy him so much? The answer was in reach, but Frank refused to reach out and grab it. Instead, he went inside and slammed the door.

 

* * *

 

 **SIX**  
_you and you feel the terrible  
vacuum between lens_

‘Be careful!’ Sarah called from the kitchen, where she was juggling two hot pans and a small dog. The dog was new. The kids screeched to a halt in front of Frank and hovered, unsure how to proceed with this new and fragile iteration of him.

‘It’s okay,’ Frank said, trying to sound gentle. Leo squirmed under his left arm and gave him an awkward side hug. She had hit a weird, gangly stage of growth and was rapidly approaching his shoulder. Zach hung back, always reluctant when he hadn’t seen Frank in a while. They were good kids. They were such good kids. Frank wanted to drop his crutch on the floor and fall to his knees and sweep them both up in his arms.

If he let himself do that, he might never let them go.

The house smelled like roasting meat and scented candles; human, normal. He picked his way through a kid project in the middle of the floor and came into the kitchen to kiss Sarah’s cheek, and to accept a beer.

‘Oh, but are you taking meds?’ Sarah asked, her hand coming up as if to take the bottle from him again.

‘No,’ said Frank. ‘I’m good.’ He wasn’t sure what happened when you mixed codeine and alcohol, but he figured the combination couldn’t be any stronger than anything they’d been pumping into him in the hospital. He took a mouthful of beer, just in case someone tried to take it away. It had been too long since he’d had one.

In any event, it turned out to have been a good choice. It took all of Frank’s mental energy to sit up straight at dinner, remember not to eat like a pig at a trough, and respond to direct questions. Leo had more than a few questions about his artificial knee. It seemed like med school was the flavour of the month. As he recalled, last time he’d been here she was all ready to roll up her sleeves and become an engineer. Sarah tried to deflect her, but she was tenacious.

‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he said at last, exhausting his limited knowledge of how his leg now functioned. ‘You’re gonna have to find a doctor to answer that for you.’ And he buried himself in his ice cream cake, purchased, said the kids, in his honour. Frank didn’t much care for sweets, but the kids were wild for it so he did his part. His first proper meal in a while; afterwards, his stomach felt like a drum and he was grateful when the kids were packed off to bed.

Leo left him with a parting shot— _take care of yourself, because you probably have PTSD now. I read about it in a book and it’s really bad_. He hugged her extra tight for that, the miniature Curtis with a long braid and a deep well of empathy.

‘Can I help with the dishes?’ he asked, and Sarah waved him away.

‘Who cares?’ she asked. ‘We’ll throw them in the dishwasher later. Or make the kids do it tomorrow morning.’ She gave David a significant look and picked up her wine glass. ‘Mama’s going to watch some garbage on TV,’ she said, and she kissed Frank on the cheekbone and disappeared into the lounge.

‘Let’s go outside,’ David said, leading the way and closing the patio door behind him. They flopped down into the sun loungers and stretched out, digesting. Reaching into his pocket, David pulled out papers and a little bag. He rolled a joint with the easy technique of a former computer science major.

‘Don’t tell Sarah,’ he said.

‘She doesn’t know?’

‘Ah, she probably knows,’ David said with a shrug. ‘But, like, just in case. Try not to get me into more trouble than I get myself into.’

‘Don’t they drug test you?’

‘Sweet, summer child,’ said David. He lit the roach and took a hit, then handed it to Frank. ‘Haven’t you figured out how to game a drug test yet?’

‘You can do that?’ Frank asked, impressed. He stuffed down the stray thought that told him he’d probably never have to take a routine drug test ever again.

‘You can’t?’

‘Asshole,’ said Frank. He took a drag and slid down in the deck chair, getting comfortable. They sat in silence for a while, passing David’s neatly-rolled joint back and forth. It kicked in slowly for Frank. He realised all at once that he was high, and closed his eyes.

‘So,’ David said after a long time. ‘How are things really?’

‘They’re shit, thanks for asking,’ said Frank. The weed made him honest.

‘Oh yeah?’

Frank stared at David in disbelief. ‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘My wife’s left me, my kids are somewhere in fucking Idaho with her, I got a metal knee and a DD-214.’

‘Right,’ said David, and coughed into his elbow before handing the joint back over to Frank. ‘That’s a lot.’

‘It’s a lot,’ Frank agreed. ‘Curtis is on my case about group.’

‘You should go.’

‘Thanks,’ said Frank. ‘I hadn’t heard that lately, or anything.’ He stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankle. Everything had blurred together into a comfortable, warm nothingness. He let his eyes slide closed again and breathed deeply and evenly. He very carefully didn’t think about Leo and Zach, and how achingly they reminded him of Frank Jr and Lisa. David was talking about something, his voice rolling on soothingly. Frank managed to make noncommittal noises every time he paused, which was rarely. One of his favourite things about David was the guy’s ability to fill up the conversation all by himself.

David was in the middle of a rambling story about how he and Sarah might, and also might not, renovate the downstairs bathroom this year, when Frank said without preamble, ‘Maria sent me divorce papers.’

David ground to a halt.

‘Shit, Frank, that fucking sucks.’

And then there was nothing else Frank could say about it, so they sat in comforting silence for a while, passing the joint back and forth until Frank felt like every atom in his body was dissipating into blissful nothingness. The balled-up concrete feeling in his chest melted away. He slid all the way down in the lounger so he was almost horizontal. The moon was coming out now and it was a little cold, but not so badly that Frank wanted to move. He watched a stray cloud scud across the sky until it came apart at the edges.

Eventually he said, ‘So I guess I need lawyer, or something.’

For some reason that made David laugh, which made Frank laugh, and then they were both giggling like damn fools over nothing. At about ten o’clock, Sarah came out to check on them and found them lying around; napping, in fact, Frank thought, but he couldn’t be too sure. Frank closed his eyes so that he didn’t have to see the way Sarah draped her arms around David’s neck and ruffled his scruffy curls with one hand, whispering to him.

Sarah dropped a sisterly kiss on Frank’s forehead and drifted away indoors.

‘I’d offer you a ride home,’ said David vaguely, ‘but I think I’m impaired.’

‘Me too,’ said Frank. ‘I’ll call a cab.’ He paused, remembering a car he’d seen the other day. ‘Hey, is Uber good?’

‘Uber’s an evil corporation stealing your data, Frank. Take a cab.’

Frank took a cab. At least to the subway; he was gimpy, but he was unemployed, after all.

 

* * *

 

 **SEVEN**  
_and audience. You laugh  
but no one laughs back_

It was grocery day, and Frank was making his way back from the store with his rucksack heavy on his back and a reusable bag in one hand. He had all the fixings for tacos, and was somehow still warm with residual delight because the bag he had bought had a repeating pattern of leaping horses. What kind of idiot got happy because of a grocery bag, Frank didn’t know. It was just the store logo printed tiny in red, over and over again. But he liked the dynamic, arched figure, jumping and jumping and jumping around the bag. Sometimes it was like Curtis said: the beautiful stuff was good for the soul.

Or maybe he was just happy because he’d stopped in at his favourite Vietnamese place, where the proprietor knew him by sight and treated him like one of her many adult sons. There was a container of rice noodles balanced on top of his groceries, and his stomach was growling in anticipation.

He came round the corner of the block, shaking his head at his own ridiculousness. For once, he didn’t have to have an eye out for trouble for it to bother him. As he headed towards his apartment building, he could hear a guy yelling, and then he saw him: a lanky guy in a denim jacket tugging on a dog leash. Frank sped up, aware that it made him a little unsteady on his bad knee but not caring.

The man’s dog was actually a puppy, he saw. It was trying to back away from the man, who was cussing it out and dragging its paws along the concrete. Frank’s pleasant warmth started to simmer. He set his grocery bag and his rucksack down on the step of the empty building next to his apartment block. Looking back up, he was just in time to see the guy plant his boot in the little dog’s side. The dog squalled and danced sideways.

‘Hey!’ Frank barked at the guy. The guy barely spared him a glance. ‘Quit it, asshole!’ Thanking himself for his earlier decision to leave his crutch at home, Frank limped over and grabbed the guy by the upper arm.

‘What the hell?’

‘Leave the dog alone,’ Frank told him. He was spoiling for a fight. He got up in the guy’s grill, wanting him to get mad.

‘Fuck you, dude,’ the man said, seeming surprised. ‘It’s _my_ dog.’

‘I don’t give a shit,’ Frank said. It was easy to hold on to the guy; he wasn’t particularly strong. That figured. Tough guys didn’t need to beat up on puppies. The dog cowered by their feet.

The man was saying something, but a pleasant, hot feeling was coursing through Frank’s body. He knew it well. It was the sweet adrenaline rush that kicked in right when shit was about to go _down_. Frank welcomed it with a smile, like an old friend. The guy started to look real scared. Then he did something stupid. He yanked his arm out of Frank’s hand, squared himself up and threw a punch. Frank juked sideways so the man’s fist barely knocked his jaw, but the touch energised him.

He returned fire, snapping the guy’s chin sideways and grinning at how the impact felt. With his knee acting up Frank wasn’t quite on his A game, but he didn’t have to be. All he needed to do was plant his feet and let muscle memory take care of the rest. His next punch had the guy staggering back. The dog whined and slunk behind the garbage cans. The sound of it pissed Frank off even more; the thought that it was scared, that this asshole had fundamentally ruined a dog’s trust. It was that sort of shit that really made Frank question his faith in humanity. He socked the guy again, watched as his head bounced off the brick wall. The guy slid to the floor, half-conscious.

‘Asshole,’ said Frank. He peered around the garbage can. The little dog was cowering, and he extended a gentle hand to it. It leaned forward but didn’t take a step. ‘C’mon,’ he said, knees cracking as he crouched down. ‘C’mon, little one. It’s okay.’ The dog touched its nose to his fingertips. It had a pair of black spots on its pink nose. Trembling, it inched forward until Frank could tuck two fingers behind its collar and draw him out. ‘It’s okay,’ Frank said again, and scooped the dog up into his arms.

He had to lean against a dumpster to get himself up out of his crouch. It hurt, but not so much he had to stop. And anyway, he was feeling flush with accomplishment. The warm afterglow of a job well done, with one dog-beating creep laid out on the floor and an enjoyable thrumming pain in his knuckles.

‘Congratulations,’ said a voice behind him, and Frank turned. Billy. He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, watching Frank. He smiled, and Frank could see the sharp whiteness of his canine teeth.

‘For what?’

Billy gestured to the dog in Frank’s arms. ‘Guess you have a dog now.’

‘Guess I do,’ said Frank, looking down at the dog. It licked his chin. ‘I like dogs,’ he said.

‘I like the way you fucking dealt with that guy,’ said Billy. His eyes were bright and interested.

‘Who kicks dogs?’ Frank asked rhetorically.

‘Probably half the city,’ said Billy, shrugging. He keyed in the access code to the building and held the door for Frank. ‘But if you want to be a hero for the oppressed, that’s your business.’

‘You said you liked it,’ Frank said. Billy laughed.

‘Said I liked the way you dealt with the guy, not with the dog.’ Frank puzzled the sentence apart, realising as he pondered that the dog didn’t smell too good. For his part, Billy was standing a sensible distance away looking like he’d just realised the same thing.

‘It’s the dog,’ said Frank apologetically.

‘Right,’ Billy said. He was still smiling, wide-mouthed. Looked like he was having a good time. Frank’s knee was acting up, and as he walked up the stairs and into the lobby he tried not to look like he was struggling. He kept up the act all the way up the stairs to his apartment, not knowing whether or not Billy was still watching him. By the time he got through his front door, arms full of wriggling, curious dog, he felt drained.

He gently set the puppy down on the floor, watched it—her, he realised—snuffle around his shoes, and then around the old linoleum in the kitchen. She was just a few months old, and a little too skinny for his liking. He surveyed his half-empty kitchen cupboards. There were the slightly stale end slices of bread, and milk in the fridge. He broke up the bread and poured over a cup of milk, giving her half at first on a plate. She dived in with a will, shunting the plate all over the slippery floor.

‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ Frank told her gently, sitting down on the floor with her. ‘I don’t have anything else for you right now.’ She looked up when he spoke, tilted her square little head. She looked like a pit cross of some kind. When he leaned out to touch her, she quivered but didn’t run away. His heart broke again; he found himself blinking back tears and dashed them away with the back of his hand. Maybe Billy was right. Crying over a fucking dog.

He let her eat, and then he gently picked her up and put her into the bathtub. The running water noise made her whine, but she sat patiently as he washed her, grey water sluicing off her until she was black and white again.

‘If I name you,’ he told her seriously, giving her the rest of the bread and milk, ‘I’m gonna end up keeping you. And I can’t keep you or I’ll get kicked out the apartment.’ No pets; it was right there on the documents, along with no smoking and subletting. She ate just as ravenously as before, and then turned herself round in a circle and fell asleep right there on the floor, her chin on the lino and her front paws outstretched like a diver.

When he was a little kid, they’d had a golden retriever called Moxie. Quiet, soft. Frank used to nap on her, listening to the huff of her breath as he fell asleep. He had felt like she would live forever. By the time Frank was in middle school, Moxie was greying and slow. She’d hobble around the house in a sailor’s shuffle. He came home from school one day and his mom had gently led him into the kitchen to say goodbye to Moxie, motionless and cold on her bed by the patio doors. And Frank had laid himself down on the tile floor next to her, even though he was a teenager and way too old, and rested his head on her soft belly for the last time.

He still missed Moxie, like an idiot. On his floor, the little puppy snored. He was probably going to end up keeping her.

 

* * *

 

 **EIGHT**  
_A life is lead by learning,  
before each breath,_

Coming back from a late-night mission to track down a banh mi, Frank almost ran into Billy outside the mailboxes. Frank had a sandwich in one hand and a backpack full of what would be contraband dog food as soon as he entered his apartment with it. Billy was carrying the same duffel bag that Frank had seen him hauling around before.

‘Hey,’ said Frank, cradling his sandwich in one hand and giving an awkward wave to Billy’s back with the other. Billy turned around, eyebrows raised.

‘You should see the other guy,’ he said immediately, and it took Frank a moment to register that Billy had a livid bruise coming up around his left eye.

‘I’m guessing you asked for it,’ Frank said, not even thinking before he said it. Whatever; anyone could figure out that the guy had a smart mouth.

‘It’s funny you say that,’ said Billy. He opened his mailbox and found nothing.

‘Looks uncomfortable.’

‘I only really feel alive when I’m getting punched in the face,’ said Billy glibly.

‘Teenage girl stealing lipstick?’

‘She was _at least_ twenty,’ said Billy.

‘Kids these days. No respect.’ Frank paused. ‘Need an ice pack?’ Billy evaluated him coolly, despite the shiner.

‘Sure,’ he said. He followed Frank up the stairs at Frank’s pace. The little dog was curled up on the end of his bed, and she was watching him from a safe distance. Frank took off his rucksack, put his dinner on the counter and opened the freezer compartment to find ice.

‘I lied,’ he said. ‘I only have frozen peas. But there’s coffee.’

‘I’d say I’m not that kind of boy,’ said Billy, taking the peas and sitting down on a bar stool, ‘but then I’d be lying too.’ He tipped his head back and rested the peas on his face. ‘God, that’s good.’

Frank put the kettle on, remembering doing it for Karen. Shit, he was so popular these days that he should probably start making real coffee.

‘Busy night?’ he asked. Billy shrugged.

‘No more than usual.’

‘I always figured private security would be mostly standing around waiting.’

‘Oh, I do enough waiting around,’ Billy said with amusement. ‘More than I’d like.’

‘Who were you with?’ Frank asked, suddenly pursuing a hunch. ‘Army?’

‘Marines.’

‘Me too,’ said Frank, too quickly. He turned around and set a mug down in front of Billy. Suddenly he wanted to know everything, tell Billy everything. ‘Just got out. This time last year I was in Afghanistan.’

‘No kidding,’ said Billy. He leaned forward on his elbows, still holding the peas against his eye. ‘I was out there for a while, in the early days. 2007. Right after Petraeus.’

‘Fuckin’ Petraeus.’ Frank said with feeling. ‘Just the one tour?’

‘Two, and then they bounced me around Iraq for a while. You?’

‘Other way around for me. Iraq first, then Afghanistan.’

‘Damn,’ said Billy. ‘Bet we know a few people in common.’

‘Why did you leave?’ Frank asked, trying not to sound jealous. He didn’t know anything about Billy. Maybe Billy had fucked himself up, too.

‘Bullshit pay, command was garbage, sick of the desert,’ Billy listed off. ‘Didn’t much like our strategy over there, at the end. Bailing and making bank looking out for rich guys and their wives seemed like a better option than letting bad intel get me killed.’

‘That’s fair,’ said Frank, feeling like he’d been gutshot. ‘I miss it.’

‘Fuck, so do I, when I think about it,’ said Billy. He blew on his coffee.

‘So what do you do?’

‘I don’t think about it.’ His face flashed into a grin again. ‘You?’

‘Honourable medical discharge,’ said Frank, averting his gaze. He felt deeply and perversely ashamed, even though he could have given anyone a list of a dozen guys who were in the same position and he didn’t feel any kind of judgement towards any of them.

‘Unfortunate,’ said Billy, his gaze running down Frank’s body from face to knee and back up.

‘You guessed that,’ said Frank. He tried not to sound like an asshole about it. Billy opted not to answer and Frank was out of pleasantries. He unwrapped his sandwich, feeling odd about eating in front of a guest but too hungry not to tuck in. He ate, and they drank their coffee in silence, Billy shifting his ice pack from time to time. He was leaning on both elbows with his back sagging down in the middle, looking tired.

‘That from the place on the corner?’ Billy asked, gesturing to the sub.

‘Yeah. Lotus Cafe. Love that place.’

‘Nice family,’ Billy said.

‘They’re just good fucking people,’ said Frank, feeling a sudden welling up of intense appreciation for them. Or maybe it was patriotism, or indigestion.

Billy said something about a Thai place a few streets over; Frank replied, still thinking about Miss Nyuget at Lotus. Always the honorific, despite the fact that she had to be in her fifties. He finished up his sandwich and crumpled all the packaging into a ball. With an overhand toss, he ricocheted it off the fridge and into the bin. He didn’t look at Billy as he did it, or afterwards. But out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Billy noticing, and he noticed that he was okay with that.

‘I’m dead in the water,’ said Billy eventually, and slid off the bar stool. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’ He placed the defrosted peas on the counter. ‘And for the _liar’s ice_.’

Frank laughed. It caught him by surprise. He hadn’t thought about anything while Billy had been sitting at his counter. Just talking back and forth and trying not to stare in awe at the high-cheekboned symmetry of Billy’s face. He showed Billy to the door, and they hovered for a moment, half-in and half-out the apartment.

‘Feel better,’ Frank said, as if a black eye were an injury requiring well-wishes.

‘Right,’ said Billy. ‘I’ll rest up, obviously.’ His mouth twitched. Frank couldn’t stop looking at it. He tried to remember where his balls were located and failed. Appalled at himself, he let Billy leave, watched him walk with long, easy strides away down the hall and then up the stairs. Billy didn’t look back at him, but Frank didn’t shut the door until he had disappeared up to the next floor.

In only mild despair, and oddly interested in the feeling, Frank took himself off to bed. On the floor, in her nest of towels, the puppy snored. He had given up on trying to convince her to sleep anywhere but there. For a while, he watched her twitching in her sleep. Then he switched off the light, lay relentlessly awake and stared at the ceiling. He endlessly replayed variations on a scene in which, instead of stupidly staring at Billy’s smart mouth, he actually leaned in and kissed it. Or in which Billy stopped eyeing him up like he was dessert and took a bite.  
That would have been that, in an unjust world. Frank had assumed that the unfairness of life was a given, except that two days later, Billy showed up at his door.

‘Hi,’ said Billy, as Frank opened it, bemused by the knocking. It was late, and Frank was out of the shower and making his slow way towards bed.

‘Hey,’ Frank said slowly, aware that he was underdressed. ‘What’s up?’

‘Came over for a cup of sugar,’ Billy said cheerily. His black eye was fading to a yellowish-grey. And he looked casual and comfortable, more than Frank had ever seen him. Wearing a thin, worn-in sweatshirt with no t-shirt underneath. It was so thin from washing, in fact, that the lines of Billy’s collar bones were visible under it.

Billy lodged himself against the doorframe in an insinuating slouch, looking Frank up and down. So Frank knew right away what Billy was here for.

‘Sugar, is it?’ he asked, finding that he wanted to play.

‘This is where you tell me that I’m already sweet enough.’

‘I try not to lie,’ said Frank, straight-faced. The way that Billy smiled when he said it made Frank warm inside. He let himself eye Billy up, not trying to hide it at all. Sometimes he wasn’t sure whether he was attracted to Billy or jealous of him. But the one thing he did know was that he felt comfortable around the guy. No need for uncomfortable explanations, or making excuses. Billy knew what he had been through and had gone through it himself. ‘I was just going to bed,’ said Frank, and he opened the door a little more, inviting without having to say anything.

‘Then we’re going the same way,’ said Billy, and he came in, all the way up into Frank’s personal space. Frank let the door close, let Billy get his hands on Frank’s chest. He was warm and demanding and solidly, inescapably real. Billy was touching him, pressing him back against the wall to kiss him. Frank was already hard and pathetically desperate, grabbing at Billy’s hips and pulling him in closer. Billy was so smooth all the time and Frank was a loser who hadn’t got fucked on the regular in three, four years.

‘Stop thinking,’ Billy said against Frank’s mouth. ‘It’s distracting.’

‘Sorry.’ Frank said. He couldn’t help thinking. This was the first time he’d done anything like this. Just met someone, and then had them come over for a booty call. He didn’t have a Tinder account or anything; he’d been married forever. Over ten years, anyway. His hands on Billy wanted to tremble. Maybe they were already trembling. He twisted them into Billy’s shirt and kissed back. That, he knew how to do.

Once, he had sanctimoniously told a buddy that there was nothing like sex with someone who really knew you, knew everything about you. Had told him to stop tomcatting and settle down if he wanted to experience the real deal. Except Billy was making a liar out of him, because Frank’s skin was sparking and alive everywhere Billy was touching him. He was taller than Frank but not so much that it was difficult; just enough that Frank was the one who had to tip his head back and reach. It excited Frank somehow, the novelty of that. Billy’s rough fingertips, calloused like his own. The familiar smell of wax in Billy’s hair, and his deodorant, like something Frank himself would wear.

Billy’s hand crept up under his shirt, and Frank sucked in a breath. The deliberateness of the touch startled him, the way Billy’s hand confidently ran up Frank’s side, his thumb on Frank’s abs. It had been a while since anyone had touched Frank like that. It had also been a while since Frank had hit the gym. But Billy didn’t seem to care. His other hand was on the back of Frank’s neck.

‘If I mess up your hair, are you going to be an asshole about it?’ Frank asked against Billy’s mouth. Billy laughed.

‘Depends,’ he said, nudging Frank’s head back and running his nose up Frank’s throat, his lips along Frank’s jawline.

‘On?’ Frank managed. Somehow his hands had ended up spanning Billy’s shoulder blades.

‘Whether or not it was worth it.’

‘Ouch.’ Frank distracted himself by pulling Billy’s sweatshirt up and over his head. That ruffled his hair, and Billy’s hand went automatically to it, combing through once to settle it. ‘Peacock,’ Frank said.

‘Get into the fucking bedroom,’ Billy retorted, giving him a little shove. Frank went, wishing he could grab Billy and manhandle in in there without pitching over on his bad leg. In the end it didn’t matter, because Billy pushed him down onto the mattress, undoing his own belt as they went.

‘You don’t waste time,’ Frank told him, hypocritically helping him tug his belt out and push his jeans down.

‘You care?’

‘Nah.’

Billy dropped his jeans on the floor and Frank propped himself up on his elbows to look at him. He was a different weight class entirely from Frank, taller, leaner. He was scarred up like Frank, though. Clocking Frank looking at him, he grinned, his eyes narrowing with it. Then he crawled over the bed towards Frank.

‘Jesus,’ said Frank, wondering if this was all just some weird painkiller dream. Billy looked like he wanted to devour Frank. His skin was warm and smooth. Curtis hugged him sometimes but it wasn’t the same; besides that and physio, Frank missed people touching him. Billy put his hand flat on Frank’s chest, up by his throat. Just the pressure of his palm twisted a little noise out of Frank. Billy lit up, his face brightening into delight. He pressed Frank down into the mattress with the weight of his his body. Frank reached for his hair, his shoulders, his waist, grabbing, pawing at him, trying not to seem like he didn’t know what he was doing but probably failing miserably.

Okay, he was desperate.

Then Billy kissed him again, and they got lost in that for a long time. Frank’s body was sinking into the mattress.

‘You got stuff?’ Billy asked against Frank’s mouth.

‘What?’ Frank said, his lips brushing Billy’s. Instead of answering, Billy leaned over and rifled through Frank’s nightstand, which took no time at all because it was empty.

‘Whatever,’ Billy said, and he lifted himself off Frank and slid down the bed. Automatically, Frank lifted his hips to let Billy pull his shorts off. When Frank thought about this first time with Billy later, he would reflect that his own performance had been piss-poor by any standard. But in his defense, he hadn’t had a blow job in years and Billy seemed to enjoy doing it. In the quiet of his apartment, Frank could distinctly hear every wet sound, every slide of Billy’s skin on the sheets, and the way he moaned around Frank’s dick.

For Frank’s part, all he could do was lie there and hold on to the bed clothes. He knew he was making pathetic noises and tried to swallow them, and to not come immediately. When he did, the pain in his knee as he flexed it almost took him out of it. Almost. And then he dared to look down at the curve of Billy’s eyelashes against his cheeks, and the solid, square fingers holding his dick, and it hit him in a rush.

He tugged Billy back up the bed, tangling them together. The bedsheets got involved and he shoved them out the way so he could stroke Billy off, their faces pressed cheek to cheek. Billy cursed his way through it and bit at Frank’s bicep. Sweaty skin to skin, they grabbed at each other, grappled like they were wrestling. Frank’s breath came strangely fast. In the end, Billy cried out, almost a pain sound, and jolted in Frank’s arms.

‘Sorry,’ said Frank right afterwards. They lay on their backs next to each other, looking at the ceiling. It had been good, in a weird way, and intense, and strange. Billy was practically a stranger.

Billy laughed.

‘You get a pass for the first time,’ he said, which wasn’t like saying it was okay, but also implied that it might happen again.

But when he woke up, Billy was gone, and his half of the bed was cold.

 

* * *

 

 **NINE**  
_how to breathe. You sit down._

Frank came swimming up into consciousness from an appalling dream in which he was trying desperately to dig Maria and the kids out of a hole in the sand. Each time he tried to scrape away a layer, the sand stayed the same and his fingers eroded a little more, until he was pawing at the ground with bloody stumps. He fumbled for his watch to check the time, and as he did he realised that the apartment buzzer was ringing. It was four in the morning. He got up and stumbled to the intercom, fully expecting some drunk hobo.

‘Frank,’ said Billy, his voice distorted through the speaker. ‘I could really use your help.’ He sounded wrong; like a man in pain. Frank’s conscious thoughts packed themselves away in a box, and he went to that reactive, tactical place that had saved his ass more times than he could count. The logic snapped into place: Billy had a key, so if he was using the intercom it meant he was in a bad way. He grabbed his key and hauled himself down the stairs as quickly as he could.

A rush of cold air assailed him when he opened the front door. He had to look around to see Billy, leaning against the wall with both hands pressed to his side. Billy was pale and rigid with pain.

‘Jesus,’ Frank said, reaching for him. Billy got an arm over Frank’s shoulders and they moved in an awkward lurch. Something gritty was stuck to the bottom of Frank’s bare left foot, but he ignored it. ‘What happened?’

‘Accident,’ said Billy. He was breathing in short, tight huffs through his nose. That sound was one Frank knew well. The pained hyperventilation of someone who was right on the edge of losing it. Hell, Frank had been in that position more than once.

‘Breathe properly, asshole,’ Frank told him, just like Billy was one of his guys. Billy obeyed. The stairs were tortuous. Frank was breathing just as hard as Billy by the end of the first flight. He couldn’t face the sixth floor, so he stopped at his own door and helped Billy inside. They had to stop again so that Frank could get up the strength to drag Billy to his bed and roll him onto it. Then, Billy was still wearing his rucksack, so that had to come off. Frank dropped it on the floor and Billy watched it go as though his entire life savings were in there.

‘Water,’ said Billy roughly, and Frank immediately went to the kitchen, even though he could feel Billy’s blood wet on his own t-shirt and didn’t want to leave him. When he came back with the glass, Billy’s rucksack was under the bed and Billy was holding a small black washbag. He shoved it into Frank’s hand and took the water.

‘What happened?’ Frank asked again, pulling open Billy’s jacket and tearing his t-shirt in a long line down his side. Something had gouged into him right under his lowest rib. The wound was long and ragged and seeping slowly but consistently. Frank pressed his thumbs into Billy’s skin and watched the wound open like a monstrous mouth, flesh corrugated and torn.

‘Chased a guy down,’ Billy said, in between gulps of water. ‘Slipped and fell on something sharp.’ He dropped the empty glass onto Frank’s rumpled bedsheets. ‘That’s a first aid kit.’

Frank unzipped the bag and there it all was—dressings, suture kit, painkillers and a couple of pre-packaged shots. Adrenaline, antibiotics.

‘Gonna wash my hands,’ said Frank, and did. When he came back with a wet towel and a bowl of water, Billy was injecting himself with the antibiotic shot. He inspected Billy’s side. ‘I can clean it out and stitch it, I guess,’ he said. ‘But you need a doctor, man. A medic.’

‘I don’t like doctors,’ said Billy. ‘Do it.’ He made barely a sound as Frank cleaned the wound out as thoroughly as he could and packed it with antibiotic cream. He’d never been great at suturing, but he did as serviceable a job as he could manage and, when he was done, the bleeding had diminished to nothing but a touch of oozing in between each stitch. A clean dressing, all the detritus in the bin, and that was that.

‘Anything else?’ he asked. ‘Need me to look at that rash for you?’ Billy gave a breathless laugh. He was clammy with sweat, the smell of it hanging around him and tugging Frank back into memories he’d rather forget.

‘I’m okay,’ he said. ‘I’m fine. Frank, thank you.’ Frank, embarrassed, tugged Billy’s boots off and dropped them on the floor. He pulled the bedsheets out from under Billy and arranged them over him, retrieving the glass.

‘I’ll take the couch,’ he said, although it was past five and he would be up and about soon anyway.

‘Stay,’ said Billy, reaching for his arm. Frank didn’t resist, and let himself be guided back down onto the mattress. It felt good to be wanted; needed.

 _You pathetic fuck_ , he told himself. He should take the couch. He should call Curtis, too, and get a real medical opinion. Frank looked across the expanse of bed separating them. Ran his gaze over Billy’s face, his eyes already closed and his mouth a little open. When he was asleep, his face softened with a vulnerability that he would probably deplore if he were told about it. Watching him, with the adrenaline in his own body finally receding, Frank found himself angry. He wondered who the hell Billy worked for that couldn’t pick up their guys when they were injured. What kind of shitty outfit just let someone drag himself home half-dead? If Frank hadn’t been home, then what?

You never left your guys behind. Frank fervently believed that; it was a core tenet of life, like leaders eating last, or not touching your goddamn face with your nasty hands.

Frank lay there sleepless as the night wore on, until a pallid grey dawn crept through the curtains. As far as he could tell, Billy slept. At least, his breathing was regular and he barely moved. Restless, Frank got up and crept into the kitchenette. There was very little in his fridge and he stood, staring into it, trying to work out what he could do with a box of eggs. He put the kettle on. There was just enough coffee left for two. He wished that he had the good stuff that you made in a French press.

When Frank turned around, Billy was leaning against the doorframe. He was very pale and his eyes were deep in shadow. His hair style hadn’t survived the night intact. Anyone else would have looked like shit, Frank thought, but somehow Billy gave off the impression that he’d spent the night misbehaving in interesting ways. Still, his hand hovered protectively over the wide expanse of dressing on his side, and when he spoke his voice was a little raw.

‘That for me?’

‘Yeah.’ Frank handed him a mug. ‘Dressing needs changed.’

‘I’ll do it later.’ Billy blew on his coffee, eyes closed.

‘Jesus. Get back into bed, you look like you’re about to fall over.’

‘No point. I’m leaving after this.’ He raised the mug. ‘Work to do.’

‘You can’t work like that. At least call in sick,’ Frank said.

‘Since when did you get to tell me what to do?’ Billy asked, bristling like an angry cat. Frank snorted.

‘Hey, you came to _me_ ,’ he said. When he had hauled Billy through his front door he’d been mostly worried, but now he was pissed off. For a brief and elating moment, he had imagined making breakfast for Billy, sitting on the side of the bed to eat. The ability to give a shit about someone and the heady possibility of them giving a shit back had clearly overridden common sense. He was lonely. That didn’t mean he had to act like an idiot over the first person to touch him.

‘Well, I’m leaving now,’ said Billy, very cool although Frank was rapidly feeling his blood pressure rise. He put his half-empty mug down on the counter and turned himself around, one hand on the wall for support. Frank watched him disappear into the bedroom, shuffle around in there, and then return with his bag in hand. He opened the front door for Billy. It seemed like the least he could do.

‘See you, then,’ he said, not wanting him to leave at all but not knowing what to say to make him stay.

‘Don’t wait up, dear,’ Billy said, and he showed his teeth, his sharp, white teeth.

 

* * *

 

 **TEN**  
_You’re either a sheet of glass_

A week later Billy had pulled his stitches out, but he was still bruised in a long smudge down his ribcage. In the half-light it was quite visible. Frank had locked his door, but somehow in the early hours of the morning Billy had slid under the covers with him, hands cold and skin smelling like the outside. Confused, Frank had jerked awake to the solid weight of Billy along his side, and had almost panicked before Billy reached for him, slid down his body and mouthed at the inside of his thigh. Frank had come once then, in the middle of the night, and fallen asleep immediately afterwards without questioning why Billy was there.

Now dawn was filtering through the curtains in a washed-out, weak sort of way. Frank cracked his eyes open to see Billy stretched out with an arm flung above his head. He had kicked off the covers, or perhaps Frank had stolen them overnight, and was wearing a pair of Frank’s sweatpants. They were too short, and the waist was too big, so there was a sweep of half-exposed lower belly where the elastic slung between his hip bones. Feeling like a pervert, Frank cradled his head on his arm to watch him. As soon as Frank moved, Billy’s eyes snapped open. Most likely he had already been awake.

‘Hey,’ Frank said immediately. Billy gave him a lazy smile and stretched.

‘Morning,’ said Billy. He looked over at Frank’s watch on the nightstand and then sank back into the mattress. ‘Thanks for the sweatpants.’

‘Thief,’ Frank accused. He laid a hand on Billy’s chest and watched it rise and fall. ‘How the fuck did you get in?’

‘You should invest in a better lock,’ Billy said, wiggling his fingers as though he was casting a spell.

‘You’re full of hidden talents.’ Frank’s tone was light but he felt obscurely off-balance. It would be strange to complain about Billy being in his bed, or taking efforts to get there. Couldn’t complain about being woken up to the feeling of Billy’s hands and mouth on him. And yet.

‘Coffee?’ Billy interrupted his train of thought.

‘Are you asking or offering?’

‘I guess I should pay my own way.’ He rolled out of bed and padded into the kitchen, sweatpants riding low and exposing his dimpled lower back. Frank drank the glass of water on the nightstand, swishing it around his mouth. In the kitchen, Billy clattered around like he lived there, humming to himself.

‘Hey Frank?’ Billy came back in with two mugs.

‘Yeah?’

‘Buy a coffee maker.’

‘Why?’

‘I got better coffee out of an MRE.’

‘Is it fucked up that I miss that coffee?’ Frank pulled himself up against the wall and accepted his mug. Billy stared at him like he was crazy. He folded his long legs down onto the bed in lotus pose, soles of his feet up.

‘Yes. Yes, it is. God. Just get a fucking Keurig.’

They sipped in silence. The sun came up and its beams extended in geometric order across the floor and up the bed. One of them struck Billy and illuminated him. Frank reached, touched the healing wound on his side.

‘How is it?’

Billy shrugged. ‘You just ignore it after a while, you know?’

‘I know. What’s this one?’ Frank ran his fingers along an old scar on Billy’s shoulder.

‘Long story.’

‘I got time.’

Billy was quiet for a while.

‘It’s fucked up,’ he said slowly.

‘Everything’s fucked up,’ Frank replied.

‘The abridged version,’ Billy said, without looking at Frank, ‘is that some creep tried to mess with me when I was a kid.’

‘Mess with?’

‘Mess with,’ Billy said, as if Frank was an idiot, and the meaning came through with nauseating clarity.

‘You fought him?’ Frank asked. He ran his thumb along the scar.

‘I was eleven,’ said Billy, ‘so no. He broke it.’

‘Asshole,’ said Frank fervently.

‘Like I said, you just ignore it after a while. That’s life in group homes.’

‘My folks died,’ Frank said very carefully, offering it out. ‘Few years back.’

‘You liked ‘em?’ Billy genuinely sounded as if there were some question as to whether or not Frank had loved his parents, so Frank answered honestly.

‘Yes. Still feel like my mom’s gonna call me on my birthday.’ His vision started to blur and he blinked. ‘I got real lucky. You?’

‘My mother dumped me at a fire station,’ said Billy. ‘So I’m guessing we weren’t destined to be close.’

‘Christ,’ Frank said, appalled. ‘You just grew up—’ Then he broke off, because Billy’s face had closed down into a blank mask. When he had finished his coffee, he rolled into his clothes.

‘Later,’ he said casually, as if he hadn’t just told Frank that his own flesh and blood had abandoned him like a unwanted Christmas kitten.

After that, Frank didn’t see Billy for a over a week. It was then that Frank realised that Billy had never given him a phone number, nor invited him to come around his apartment. Lacking something to break up the evenings, Frank tried to read. He downloaded a little game into his phone that let him match gems, which was bizarrely absorbing. He took the puppy for as long a walk he he could manage twice a day. He still didn’t dare to give her a real name but she responded to anything: girlie, princess, sweetheart, pup. Once, he called the VA, for reasons that he did not quite allow himself to admit. Anyway, he ended up on hold for so long that eventually he hung up. And all the while he felt strange, restless and lonely. It took Frank more than a few days before the answer came to him: he missed Billy.

Absence was in a way a familiar feeling. He had spent more of his marriage, more of his kids’ lives, overseas than he had spent at home. At then at home the park, the fairground, the zoo, the road trips to Maria’s parents’ place. When Dad was home, the whole family got to do fun things. Disney, one year.

It wasn’t like he and Billy got ice cream and held hands at the park. And it had only been a week. But somehow Frank missed him, a weird and new way. He was finding himself going out at weird times, hoping to catch Billy at eleven at night on the stairs.

Just now he was walking along his street, stretching out his knee. It didn’t hurt half so much as it had in the first week home, but it stiffened up something horrible if he sat around all day. And anyway, as Billy had pointed out to him last time they’d fucked, Frank’s abs were disappearing.

Somewhere in the night, a woman’s voice rose in a sob, pleading. Frank couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and it died away soon after. Right now, out in the city, some guy who Frank could’ve served with was killing criminals. He wondered if the woman needed help. He wondered if there was anyone who would step in if she did.

His foot caught a glass bottle, which skittered away and smashed against a wall. He looked over and saw an impossible quantity of glass on the ground for a single bottle; then he looked again, and saw that the whole front window of Miss Nyuget’s cafe had been shattered. Inside, she was stacking chairs on top of tables. Frank stopped in his tracks, and then he went in. The little bells above the door chimed just like they always did.

‘What happened?’ he said very gently. Miss Nyuget looked up at him. Her face was tear-stained.

‘Some guys,’ she said. ‘Some guys making trouble for me, stealing everything in my till.’ Frank came towards her slowly, unsure what exactly to do or so. He wondered what Curtis would do, and then decided.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and he held out his arms. To his surprise, she set her broom against a table and hugged him, her little greying head not even reaching his chin. She allowed herself a moment, and one sniff, and then she was back to sweeping. Frank put some more chairs up out the way on tables.

‘Did you know the guys?’ he asked. ‘Did you get them on camera?’

She shrugged.

‘No cameras. And anyway, they had masks.’

They moved along the window, Frank, setting up the chairs and Miss Nyuget sweeping. At the end, she dropped all the glass in the trash, and sat down heavily. Frank noticed that although she was wearing her usual plum lipstick, she had no eye makeup on.

‘Who does this?’ he asked, not really expecting a reply. ‘You didn’t deserve this. You work hard for that money.’ She leaned over and patted him on the arm as if it was her place to console him, and not the other way round.

‘Money’s no problem,’ she said. ‘But they beat up on my son. They hurt my little boy.’

Miss Nyuget’s little boy was well over thirty, but right now she looked like she’d fly into battle with her broom for him. Frank had seen Clarence Pham at the cafe some evenings, and thought now that he didn’t look like a guy who’d put up much of a fight. He wondered what would have happened if his mother had been around.

He found that he wanted to tell Billy about it. The days stretched on without him, and Frank flopped around helplessly, getting through life half-bored, half-anxious, all hating himself for his paralysis. Then, on the ninth day of Billy’s absence, when Frank was about ready to take his sleeping bag and camp out on Billy’s floor of the apartment building, Billy exploded back into Frank’s apartment. Frank was jerked out of sleep by Billy knocking on his door. Fearing another first aid session, Frank hustled his gimpy ass out of bed ASAP. As he opened the door, Billy grabbed two handfuls of his shirt and shoved him back inside, kissing him like he was getting paid to do it.

‘Hi,’ Frank said into his mouth as Billy kicked the door closed. It was dark, but they didn’t need to be able to see to get to the bedroom. Billy was eager and just a little bit vicious. With his three remaining functioning brain cells, Frank wanted to tell him that maybe if he came round more often, he wouldn’t always have to maul Frank about. But then, if he told Billy that, maybe Billy would _stop_ mauling him.

It was an exhausting line of inquiry; exhausting like everything else about Billy. Frank had spent a week thinking about him all the time, overthinking about him. And now he was back, and biting at the tender skin under the edge of Frank’s jaw, and mumbling something that Frank couldn’t hear but which sounded dirty. He was freshly-showered and smelled like soap and mint and laundry detergent. Mostly he just came over after work. The notion that Billy had done himself up for Frank—maybe even missed him, Frank thought deliriously, collapsing down on the bed with him in a heap of hands and mouths—well, that really got Frank off.

He wanted to say something about it. He wanted to say a lot of things to Billy. But he couldn’t find the words. And then Billy slid down the bed, shoved Frank’s good leg up over his shoulder, and pressed his warm, wet mouth to Frank’s asshole. It was appallingly intimate. Already Frank was hard, and the shock of it made him flag a little. He could hear the play of Billy’s tongue. Billy snapped his fingers up in Frank’s line of vision.

‘Lube,’ he said. Frank passed it to him. Then Billy’s fingers were up in him, and the scratch of his beard was making the muscle of Frank’s inner thigh twitch and shake. Billy came up for air, wiping his chin with the back of his wrist. He boxed Frank in, fists down on the mattress on either side of his shoulders. A nudge—Billy’s knee edging Frank’s legs apart. The air was cold on his wet skin. Frank’s good leg was hooked up over Billy’s hip somehow. With a careful touch, Billy bent Frank’s other knee so that his foot was flat on the mattress. Wonders of physiotherapy; it hardly hurt at all. ‘Give me a pillow,’ Billy said. Frank handed one over, and Billy shoved it under Frank’s ass.

‘Thanks,’ said Frank, dryly.

Billy laughed. ‘I hear it’s all about the angle.’ He was showing his teeth again, that half-smile. The bite on Frank’s jaw throbbed in time with it. Frank wanted to tell him to wait, but Billy’s face was a miracle of intensity, staring at Frank like he wanted to devour him. So Frank let Billy push into him and breathed through the long, gritty drag. And it turned out that he could handle it, like he could handle everything else. Then Billy got his hand on Frank’s cock, and Frank didn’t care about anything but coming—coming, and the noises Billy was making.

* * *

‘Can you fuckin’ believe this guy?’ Frank asked much, much later. He had retreated to the kitchen for resupply, stomach sticking to his ribs. Returned to bed with water and a bag of pretzels to share, and the New York Bulletin.

Karen’s article had come out. Frank had walked past a stack of papers on the way home from the subway, and her name had screamed at him from the front page. So of course he’d bought a copy, wondering.

‘What guy?’ Billy was lying with his eyes closed and his hands folded on his belly.

‘The Punisher,’ said Frank, mockingly doing air quotes with his free hand. Billy snorted.

‘What about him?’

‘He’s an asshole,’ said Frank. This time, Billy laughed.

‘You know him personally or something?’

‘Nah. Still don’t like him.’

‘What’s not to like?’ Billy asked. ‘He’s getting some assholes off the streets.’

‘Still don’t like it,’ said Frank, stubbornly. He folded the paper and chucked it onto the floor, then came over to flop onto the bed. He lay on his stomach and buried his face in the cradle of his arms. A thought occurred to him. ‘Hey, some lady from the Bulletin interviewed me about him.’

‘When?’ Billy said, finally opening his eyes.

‘Month back, maybe. Right after I moved in.’

‘What did she want with _you_?’ asked Billy.

‘Thought the Punisher was ex-military,’ Frank explained, ‘probably special forces.’

‘She a civilian?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘So how the fuck would she know?’

‘She’s a journalist,’ said Frank, feeling absurdly protective of Karen. ‘She researches stuff.’

Billy made a scoffing noise. ‘Whatever,’ he said, and he rolled over towards Frank, inexplicably ready to go again. ‘I didn’t come here to talk about current events.’ And just like that, Frank had lost—although he had not exactly been trying to win, and wasn’t sure if Billy had been either.

 

* * *

 

 **ELEVEN**  
_turning back into sand  
or a suit woven of smoke_

Billy came out of his apartment, sliding around the door and closing it behind him. He looked tired. It was eight in the morning and Frank knew enough about his comings and goings to know that he worked late into the night. Billy’s soft white t-shirt was creased and his hair was appealingly rumpled. The kind of appeal that made Frank want to push him back inside and go back to bed with him. But Billy had never once invited Frank back to his place, and there was a skittishness about him sometimes that made Frank leery of pushing the issue.

‘Frank,’ said Billy, his voice crackly with sleep. What was left of Frank’s heart did a little roll in his chest. He came in a little closer, almost into Billy’s personal space. God help him, but he loved hearing Billy say his name.

‘We should talk,’ said Frank, forcing the words out. Billy raised his eyebrows.

‘Come back in a few hours and I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand.

‘Now,’ said Frank, with a firmness of purpose that he didn’t feel. He was clasping his hands together behind his back hard, and it was making his knuckles hurt. Anything to stop him from reaching for Billy and ruining this whole venture. ‘Can we go inside?’ He gestured to Billy’s door.

‘If you’re going to give me the sad sack break up speech, you can do it in the hallway,’ said Billy. His face had flattened out into studied blankness, which twisted Frank up inside.

‘It’s not a break up speech,’ said Frank. ‘There are just things I need to know.’

‘If you want my star sign, it’s Scorpio,’ said Billy. ‘But I don’t hold with all that astrology stuff.’

Frank ignored the pitiful attempt at deflection and pressed on.

‘I’ve never been in your apartment,’ he said. He had made notes last night on the back of a piece of junk mail. He tried desperately to recall his talking points. ‘I don’t know your last name. I don’t know who you work for, or why you work fucked up hours, or why you got left in an alley to almost bleed out. I don’t know anything about you at all.’

‘Does it matter?’ Billy said. He had folded his arms and was leaning against the wall with unfair poise.

‘It matters to me.’

‘You’re old fashioned,’ Billy sniped. He smiled in the mean way, the one where he curled his top lip back off his teeth like a dog sending a warning. ‘It’s boring.’

‘If it sounds better, call it operational security,’ said Frank, with short, bitter laugh. ‘I like to know who I’m letting into my life.’

‘So do I,’ countered Billy.

‘You always take it this far?’ Frank asked. Billy shrugged, an elegant roll of his shoulders.

‘That’s my business, isn’t it?’

Frank had no response to that.

The world was full of mysteries, both large and small, Frank knew. He wasn’t a professor or a scientist or a politician. Things escaped him. The ratio of things he understood to things he had no goddamn clue about was high, and higher still since he’d entered civilian life for the first time since he was seventeen. After chewing over Billy’s weird recalcitrance for a day or two, he had run down the mental list of people who helped him with problems that were above his pay grade. Luckily, there was David, who was Frank’s first contact for a certain kind of problem, which this problem certainly was.

All the same, it was hard to feel good about taking a cab over to David’s pretty little suburb to ask a dumb fucking question. Frank didn’t really care to expose both his stupidity and his relationship with Billy—if that was what it even was. But here he was, standing on David’s front step early on a Saturday morning when both his kids were at the swimming pool with Sarah.

‘Hey Frank,’ said David, opening the door in dark red shorts and a paisley robe like a pasha. He waved him in and walked away off into the lounge to lie on the sofa. Frank closed the door neatly behind himself, propped his crutch against the wall and lowered himself into a chair.

‘Quiet morning?’ asked Frank, not knowing how to proceed.

‘Sure,’ said David. ‘Kids are out. Catching up on my reading.’ On the coffee table, Frank saw, was a thick book with a serious-faced man on the front and a dry title. Something about the security state, and how the government was bad. Frank didn’t know from bad when it came to government. He sometimes thought he should learn. Maria always used to vote for the school board and local politicians. Frank stuffed that thought away. This wasn’t about Maria.

He cut to the chase.

‘I was hoping you could do me a favour.’ He stopped, corrected. ‘Another favour.’

‘Nothing between friends,’ David said, handwaving.

‘Could you…’ began Frank, slowly, ‘could you run a background check on someone?’

‘A background check isn’t really a single thing,’ said David, steepling his fingers over his bare chest and looking over at Frank like an eccentric philosopher. ‘We use it that way, but everyone who looks that kind of data up is looking for different things—criminal record, past names and addresses, interactions with flagged persons of interest, you know.’

‘Okay,’ said Frank, who didn’t really know but was willing to let David run his battery out if that was what was necessary.

‘So it depends what you need to know, and how deep you want to go,’ David continued, with no indication that he’d even heard Frank. ‘You give me long enough, I can find pretty much anything.’ He looked over at Frank. ‘Why? Or, I guess I should say, who?’

‘A person I’ve been seeing,’ said Frank vaguely.

‘Seeing,’ said David. ‘Dating?’

‘Not really,’ said Frank evasively.

‘Fucking?’

‘None of your goddamn business,’ said Frank, except that he was making it David’s business.

‘You want it to be more serious,’ said David knowingly. ‘So what’s this guy’s deal?’ Frank died inside a little.

‘I dunno, man. Something not right about the guy. Never been in his apartment. Never talks about his work. Comes and goes at funny hours. Don’t know his full name.’

‘Jesus, Frank,’ said David, like a disappointed older brother. ‘Have you tried asking?’

‘Of course I’ve fucking tried it,’ said Frank. He pawed at his face, rubbing his tired eyes. ‘And it didn’t work, so now I’m asking you.’

David blew out a long breath.

‘Are you sure it’s worth it?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Frank stifled the anger that was rising in him. He knew it was fucked up to be mad at David because Billy was secretive to the point of paranoia.

‘I’m going to be honest with you, Frank. It sounds like you don’t really know the guy. Maybe you should just cut your losses, you know? Find someone better.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with him,’ Frank said. He consciously unclenched his jaw. ‘I just want to be sure, okay? I just want to know. Trust, but verify. Someone important said that, right?’

‘Ye-ah…’ said David. ‘Ronald Reagan. About the _Soviets_.’

‘Bad example,’ said Frank. ‘But I still wanna know for sure.’

‘God, I want to sign you up for a dating site. Or find you someone nice at the gym. Maybe Sarah works with some singles.’ But David was already reaching under the coffee table for his laptop and popping it open on his lap. Never could resist an intrigue. That was spooks for you.

‘I don’t need help finding a date,’ said Frank. ‘I just gotta know if there’s something wrong with this guy. Something I need to worry about.’

‘Okay,’ said David, running his hand down over his mouth and beard. He rolled off the couch and over to the fridge, grabbed two beers and handed Frank one. ‘I feel like I’m going to need this. Look. What is it about this guy you don’t trust?’

‘Nothing, exactly,’ said Frank. ‘I dunno. Look, I just don’t like surprises, okay?’

‘It’s a little creepy, Frank,’ said David slowly, his eyes searching Frank’s face. ‘You ever run a background check on your wife?’

‘No,’ said Frank, bewildered. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Well, at least answer me this. Does he make you happy?’

‘Yes,’ said Frank miserably.

‘A resounding romantic success, then,’ said David. For once, the particular dryness of his humour was wasted on Frank. He hammered away at the keyboard and then looked up. ‘I’m going to need everything you have on this guy.’

‘That’s not a lot.’

‘Yeah, so don’t leave anything out. Name, address, phone number, any cities you know he’s lived in, any jobs you know he’s had, dates of same, you know. Everything.’

Forced to list out the information, Frank realised that there was even less of it than he had feared.

‘His name’s Billy,’ he said.

‘So probably William.’

‘He sounds like a New Yorker but I know he didn’t grow up in NYC.’

‘New York State,’ said David, ‘and I’ll add Jersey, too.’

‘Former Marine. 2003 to 2013.’ He listed off where Billy had been, confident in his dates and places.

‘That helps a lot,’ said David, adding it all in a flurry of typing.

In the end, Frank couldn’t bear to sit here and watch David trawl through government records. For a start, he hummed and tapped while he worked. That was annoying. Worse was the guilt Frank felt at knowing he was intruding on Billy’s privacy. The guy was entitled to it. Most likely he’d been through as least as much shit as Frank had. Did Billy have a family? Did they want him around? What had he been required to do in the line of duty? Unbidden, the wash of sense memories came back to Frank: the fear-stink of a man about to die, the shrieking of the gutshot, the stifled sound of rape from inside a house that none of them would ever admit to hearing.

So he left, and told David to call him when he had information. Frank started the long, long walk back to the train station, forgoing an Uber or a cab. His knee started to hurt in the first mile, but he kept going. The pain grounded him. He fell into a rhythm of footfalls and breath that lasted him until he was almost dragging his bad leg behind him. On the train, nobody sat next to him, nor on the subway home. By the time he hauled himself into his building, he had to take the freight elevator up to his floor. He still felt guilty.

Hours later, dinner was a distant memory and Frank was lying half-asleep on top of his neatly-made bed. He was still in his street clothes, too tired to contemplate the bending and balancing required to get undressed. His phone rang.

‘Yeah?’

‘Hi, how are you doing, David? Oh, I’m great, happy to be your intel bitch,’ David said to him, but his heart wasn’t in it.

‘Sorry,’ said Frank reflexively, because most everything he did these days merited some kind of immediate apology.

‘So your guy keeps his head pretty low down,’ David said, ‘if it’s even him. Let me send you a photo.’ Frank’s phone screen flashed against the side of his face and he looked at David’s message. There was Billy’s face, flattened in a muted old driver’s license photo.

‘Yeah,’ said Frank, his throat tight. ‘That’s Billy.’

‘Billy—or should I say, William—Russo. I can’t tell you his exact birthday, because he was surrendered when he was a few days old. He’s pretty well documented in the system up until the age of seventeen, when he upped and joined the Marines. I could place him on a map for you for the next ten years. Then—nothing. He left the Marines and the only information after that is a driver’s license, New York.’

‘So he’s laying low,’ Frank said. ‘Nothing weird about that.’

‘Nobody lays this low for no reason, Frank.’

‘That’s paranoid.’

‘I’m not the one running a background check on my cute new boyfriend,’ said David dryly, and Frank couldn’t really argue the point back.

Feel antsy, he took the dog for a walk. They circled the block a few times, the puppy inspecting every lamppost and car wheel. Frank let her dawdle along and sniff. It wasn’t like he was on a schedule. On impulse, he took them up to Lotus, looping the little dog’s leash around the fire hydrant outside while he went in for lunch.

Miss Nyuget’s was as tidy as it had ever been, and the glass had been replaced in the front window. As always, a cheerful sign was outside with the special of the day, and the proprietor had retaken her rightful place behind the counter. Frank noticed that today she was wearing makeup again, and a cobalt blue necklace with beads the size of his thumb. Order seemed to have been restored to the universe. He ordered the lunch box and she gave him an extra spring roll, singing to herself as she packed the styrofoam container.

‘Better today?’ Frank asked.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, ringing up his order at the till. ‘Since the money came back.’

‘Police came through for you?’

She smiled at him, radiant, and handed him his lunch. ‘No, someone else.’ She looked around the cafe, quiet in this hour before the lunch rush, and leaned in. ‘In a bag with a skull. Like on the news.’

Something cold ran through Frank. She didn’t have to explain for him to understand precisely what skull she meant: the stylised, blocky white sigil of the Punisher. The symbol invariably left spray painted on the chests of his victims. The idea that somehow this man knew who Nyuget was and could interface with her life left him prickling with the uncomfortable, alert feeling of impending combat.

‘Did you see him?’ Frank asked. His body sagged with relief when she shook her head.

‘He came by in the night. Got into my kitchen. _He_ didn’t smash my window!’ Nyuget finished triumphantly, then added, ‘and quicker than the NYPD, too.’

Seeing her satisfaction and her clear belief that justice had been done, Frank remembered Karen talking about the clients from her old law firm. The police had done nothing. The cafe had no CCTV. There would be no real leads. And so someone had taken care of business.

Later, back in his apartment, Frank chewed his food mechanically and scrolled the local news. Halfway down the first page, he found precisely what he had expected to find. A headline, screaming in bold, _PUNISHER STRIKES AGAIN: THREE DEAD_. And the text, confirming that Miss Nyuget’s secret benefactor had gunned down three men running a petty robbery ring. The last few mouthfuls of his lunch held little appeal. He picked out the chunks of pork and gave them to the dog.

Frank drew circles in the condensation ring his beer had left on the counter. Made it into a smiley face, then gave it fancy hair. Then he made little dead crosses for a pair of dead eyes and finally he just swept it into a long stripe of water. He had argued to Karen that the Punisher was a jackass who had no business doing what he was doing, military or no. But there had been no help for Miss Nyuget and her son and her little business, her livelihood. And now those guys wouldn’t bother her again. Frank considered it, listening as he did to the soft, wheezing breathing of the puppy. He figured that he might have done something dumb himself had he come across the guys who’d robbed an innocent woman and her bookish, earnest son.

 

* * *

 

 **TWELVE**  
_The concept of time starts over._

So there was nothing wrong with Billy. Except, Frank reflected as he brushed his teeth, there was no information to go on, because either Billy had taken great pains to keep it that way, or he had friends in high places who had scrubbed his record. Neither of those options were good. Given the chance, Frank would always pick the devil he knew; lack of good intel got you killed.

He put his shoes on and tied them neatly, then stuck a thin pair of gloves in his pocket. Earlier he had been nervous, but now he had settled into a comfortable and familiar state of operational calm. If he couldn’t solve the mystery of Billy Russo by conventional methods, then he was going to go hunting for clues, like Nancy fucking Drew.

It was six in the evening. Frank had never once seen Billy around then. Almost always the guy was coming home towards midnight, and often later. Hardly feeling his knee at all, Frank took the stairs up and stood for a while in the hallway, listening. The carpet was a different colour up here and the air smelled very slightly and subtly different, but otherwise it could have been the hall outside his own apartment. He paced quietly along to Billy’s door and leaned against the wall. Pulling his phone out of his pocket gave him something to stare at; plausible deniability if he got caught. It was switched off, but he lounged against the doorframe, holding it up as if reading. There was no movement inside, no sound of life.

Frank knocked. Still nothing.

His heart felt like it had slowed down to a glacial pace, keeping time with the long, even inhales and exhales of his breath. Hands very steady now, Frank drew a lockpick from his jacket and set to work breaking into Billy’s home.

Frank held his breath, teasing the lock open until he heard it click. The lockpick went back in his pocket and he pulled on his gloves. Then he pushed the door open and slipped inside, closing it behind him. It was pitch black in Billy’s apartment and it smelled achingly like Billy. The familiarity of it threatened Frank’s icy detachment. Guilt tried to creep in. Frank stuffed it down. He had more important things to do. Slowly, his eyes adjusted and he took a few steps forward. It was still hard to see details. He brought his hands up to waist-height, gently feeling his way forward. At first he couldn’t work out why he had come up against a wall instead of the bedroom door, and then he realised that Billy’s apartment was on the other side of the building to his and the floor plan must be mirrored.

Into the bedroom. Underneath the pervasive Billy scent was laundry powder and some kind of grooming product. He closed the door behind him, so that when he took out a little pen torch and flipped it on, the light wouldn’t be visible in the hallway. The light was weak, but it was enough to work with. Frank ran it over the tops of the dresser and nightstand, over the bed. Billy’s bed sheets were silvery-grey plaid, nicer than Frank’s by far. With a creeping feeling in the skin of the back of his neck, Frank slid all the drawers open one by one. Nothing but neatly-folded clothes and an e-reader. A phone charger, neatly coiled. Brand new socks in their package.

Ignoring his knee, Frank knelt and looked under the bed. Nothing. The closet, hung with a few jackets and shirts. A pair of boots and some dress shoes; a hanging unit with extra linens. Billy kept new toiletries in a cardboard box in his closet. Even though he wasn’t supposed to be here, and even though Billy would certainly take his uninvited presence as a hostile gesture, Frank found himself feeling strangely close to Billy. The drawers, the toiletries, the neatly-made bed; it was all exactly what Frank did himself. Maybe just a little classier. Frank ran his hand underneath the low closet shelf, hoping to find something. Perhaps a document box. Anything. But it was empty except for a shoe-cleaning kit in a zipped up pouch.

He crept from the bedroom, remembering to close the door behind him. Turned the corner (the wrong way, he thought) into the living area. His breath sounded extraordinarily loud in his ears. At any moment Billy could, in theory, walk in through his front door. Safely around the corner into the living area, he turned his torch on again, pointing it at the floor.

Impact hit him like a truck, and with a hand at his throat he fetched up against the wall, hitting it so hard his teeth rattled. The torch went spinning away. Acting on instinct, Frank fought back, but then a flare of pain in his knee from a vicious kick sent him gasping to the floor. Down on his hands and knees, his head was vulnerable. He braced for more pain. Then the light came on and he was blinded. He looked up through squinting eyes.

Billy’s face took a moment to resolve. He was livid, flushed, his hair hanging down in his face. His right hand was curled back at an odd angle, and Frank saw with a horrible thrill that he had a wrist blade extended from a cuff. The way that Billy was standing meant that he was ready for Frank to try to fight again. So Frank didn’t. He stayed low, breathing hard through the pain but not daring to move his weight from his knee.

‘What the fuck are you doing in my apartment, Frank?’ Billy sounded almost calm. There was no explanation; the words wouldn’t come. Billy lashed out, kicked the wall inches from Frank’s head. ‘Tell me!’ The wrist knife was well-honed and Frank had no doubt that Billy knew how to use it. He swallowed.

‘Wanted to know about you.’

‘You wanted to know about me.’ Billy repeated it slowly, as though Frank were speaking a foreign language. ‘Thing is, Frank, if I wanted you to know, I’d have told you.’ He crouched down, looked into Frank’s face. ‘Wouldn’t I?’

‘I dunno, Bill,’ said Frank, ‘would you?’

Billy reached out and almost tenderly rested the point of his wrist blade under Frank’s chin. ‘Are you a cop, Frank Castle?’

‘No.’

‘No? You just break into my apartment and come creeping around, huh? Just for fun, huh?’

‘It wasn’t fun,’ said Frank. ‘I had to know.’

‘Because someone’s paying you?’

‘Because I like you, god damn it,’ said Frank, his repressed anger unable to stay down any more. ‘I like having you around. I’m into you. And it’s fucking with my head that you keep so many secrets.’

Billy tilted his head. He sat down on the floor opposite Frank, leaning back against the wall. They were just in the hallway and the space was narrow enough that their legs overlapped in a weird, intimate knot.

‘You like me?’

Frank felt the dull heat of a blush climbing in his face and thought how ridiculous it was to be blushing right now.

‘I don’t fucking know,’ he said.

Billy tilted his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He had clearly ruled Frank out as a threat, which rankled. Even now Frank knew that he could do Billy some serious damage if he had to. But he didn’t have to. From where he was sitting, he could see the additional knife strapped to Billy’s calf. The guy was prepared.

The pulse beating in Billy’s throat was an unhurried flicker now, and because his eyes were closed and he was no longer holding a weapon to Frank’s throat, Frank was able to look around. Billy was no better hand at interior decorating than Frank himself was. If Frank’s apartment was unfussy, Billy’s was bordering on the Spartan.

‘Are you going to do something stupid, Frank?’ Billy asked, looking him directly in the eye.

‘Maybe,’ grunted Frank, meaning no. With no effort whatsoever, Billy stood without pushing himself up with his hands.

‘Come on. I want to show you something.’

Much less elegantly, Frank got to his feet. He surreptitiously tested his weight on his foot before putting too much pressure on his knee. He followed Billy into the open space of his living room and kitchenette.

‘Nice curtains?’ Frank said, baffled, because there was nothing much of interest to be seen except the plain navy fabric in front of him.

‘Turn around.’

Frank turned, and the hair on the back of his neck prickled in alarm. Billy had created an armoury in his apartment. That was the only way to describe it. He had hung corrugated plastic along the side wall, and neatly arrayed were a wider variety of firearms than Frank had seen, possibly ever.

‘Jesus.’

The revelation, when it came, was precipitated not by the rack of weaponry, or by the repurposed metal chests along the floor with the ghost of military stencils on their sides. It wasn’t the slow realisation that he had been smelling metal and gunshot the whole time, or even Billy’s strange hours and wounds. It was the can of white paint on the edge of the table in front of Frank.

White paint; skull paint.

‘I mean,’ Billy drawled, observing from the middle of the room, blade still out, ‘you get why I didn’t invite you over.’

‘Look,’ said Frank, his voice coming out strangely. ‘You didn’t clean this properly.’ Mechanically, he began dismantling the gun. Billy had set up a whole station against the back wall in exactly the way Frank would have done. Everything in easy reach. His world shrank down to his focus on the familiar steps, working solvent into all the tiny, hidden corners of the action. His nose twitched at the acridity. He laid out all the clean pieces, wiped his hands on a rag, and then slotted it all back together until the final result sat satisfyingly on the table.

‘Thanks,’ said Billy. Frank didn’t like the sharp amusement in the way he said it. It made him feel as though Billy was laughing at him.

‘News says you’ve killed about four dozen people,’ said Frank, still looking down at the pistol because he couldn’t make himself look at Billy.

‘I don’t keep count,’ said Billy.

‘No? Seems like you have everything else down pat.’

‘Isn’t all of this?’ Billy’s arm waved in Frank’s peripheral vision. ‘It’s all just training and reflex.’

‘It’s not what we trained for,’ said Frank. Billy gave a bitter laugh.

‘Yes it is,’ he said. ‘Defend our glorious nation against the forces of evil, et cetera.’

‘You make it sound like a bad thing.’ Frank turned carefully and sat himself up on Billy’s workbench. Billy had retracted the vicious little wrist blade back into his sleeve, and he was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, as he liked to do. Watching him, Frank tried, and failed, to imagine successfully fighting Billy off with that weapon. Wondered how many times he’d got up close to someone and ended them with a swift strike to the throat.

‘You really drank the Kool-Aid, huh?’

‘Yeah? And where did you go wrong, pissing on the memories of all the Marines who died fighting for freedom?’ Frank asked.

‘Christ,’ said Billy. He rolled his eyes like Frank was a misguided teenager. ‘You enlisted?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

Frank hesitated before answering. ‘It felt like the right thing to do.’

Billy made a noise like a game show buzzer. ‘Try again.’

‘Good career choice.’

‘I’m not the only liar in the room, huh?’ Billy said.

‘Okay, why did you join?’

‘Had a feeling I’d be good at it,’ said Billy, as if that were obvious. ‘I already knew I could take a beating.’

‘Yeah,’ said Frank. ‘I know what you mean.’ He was playing with his wedding ring again, using his thumb and little finger to turn it around and around. ‘I guess I thought that if I had to be whaling on anybody, it might as well be the bad guys.’ The phrase _bad guys_ sounded childish when he said it out loud, like something one of his kids would say. ‘People who were dangerous,’ he corrected. ‘Who deserved it.’ Neither of those were right, either.

‘I never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it,’ said Billy. ‘So are you going to call the cops, or are you going to climb down off your high horse and listen to some real fucking talk?’

Frank was silent for a long time. Outside, a train rumbled by. Inside, the only sounds were of his breathing and Billy’s. The pistol had felt familiar in his hand. For a moment, he’d felt like himself again. Down the street, Miss Nyuget’s cafe was as it should be, no thanks to Frank. The logic of everything shifted one step to the left and slotted into place.

‘I’m listening,’ he said, finally. Billy’s face blossomed into a smile. He came up close to Frank and slid the hand with the wrist knife up under Frank’s shirt. It ghosted over his hip, Billy’s thumb resting just inside his hip bone. Frank held his breath. And then Billy leaned in, pressed his mouth to Frank’s neck, his cheek, his temple.

‘Good,’ Billy said.


End file.
